Walker Ranch Hike with the Boys

One of the days I had to stay home with the kids so Tara could do some work at her new school, we decided to get out to do some more hiking.  I am always seeking out new places the kids haven't hiked yet and I thought the Walker Ranch Loop would be awesome.  It was fairly warm this day so we decided to maybe just do the first portion of the loop rather than the whole thing, but the goal was to get down to the river and let them play in it a bit.  Here are these guys all smiles at the start.

Not far into the trail from the parking lot you start descending almost a mile down to the valley floor below where the river is.  These guys haven't quite realized we have to come back up whatever we go down, but they are enjoying the trip so far.

We finally made it to the more gently part of the stream at the bottom and these guys were happy to crawl around among the rocks and look for fish and any other things they can find.  The water was actually ice cold which kept them out of getting too wet.

I am pretty sure you can't take these guys on a hike without them trying to find some sort of rocks to climb up.  These were fairly safe, though once you get more than about 10 feet up I start to get a bit nervous.

Further down the trail the river starts to get a bit more rocking and this whitewater area looked pretty crazy.  It kept things nice and cool with the mist from the river.

We turned around a bit farther up the trail near some beaver dams and choice trout fishing areas that had some calm pools.  After a light lunch that we packed in we had to make the slog back up the hill.  These guys did great and always love getting into the outdoors where they can explore and still be little WildKratts.  Always so much fun, assuming I can relax enough to let them be themselves.