Signs of Fall

Since I'm teaching the unit "Signs of Fall" to my preschoolers this week, I've had leaves changing color, crisp weather, pumpkins, apples and acorns on my mind a lot.  It worked perfectly that we had a free Saturday to drive up into the hills and experience some of these signs of fall for ourselves yesterday!

We spent the day hiking new paths at our favorite Big Trees State Park.  On the way, we stopped at a roadside apple stand for some cider donuts and honey sticks.

We know certain parts of Big Trees better than almost any other hiking area, but yesterday was a lot of new and unfamiliar for us.  On Friday they opened an awesome new visitors' center, so we had fun checking out all of its interactive exhibits.

Then we took a new trail that led to a scenic overview.  Most of the leaves were already down, so we were probably about two weeks off in experiencing fall to its fullest, but it was still beautiful and cooler and worth the outing.

The overview!  We could even see some of what we thought were Yosemite's peaks up here.

The leaves were dry and just barely clinging to the trees.  Delia discovered she could "make it fall" when she shook the trees.

 Though the loop we hiked yesterday didn't have as many Giant Sequoias as the one we usually hike, we still saw a few of these favorites.  The tree below was covered in drips of this really neat crystallized sap.

And then we drove down to the river where we skipped rocks, climbed boulders and took pictures in the pretty scenery.

This picture cracks me up.  I'll share it for the sake of keepin' it real here on the old blog.  At the river there were a lot of big boulders to scale in order to get around.  And a lot of wild rapids to fall into if you slipped off a boulder.  The girls are confident and strong climbers, we don't normally worry about them, but Delia was in a mood that had her being more of a daredevil than usual (imagine that!).  So, here she sits out since she wasn't obeying and climbing safely.  This picture just captures Delia and a moment that is somewhat regular for her! :)

Our great day of fall hiking was topped off with a view of the sun setting in a painted sky on the way home.