The Houghs: Hittin' the Trail

A couple kids in a wig-wam. Why not.

What's up, gang.

So I assume that if you're reading this, you haven't died from COVID-19 yet. Nice job, there - keep up the good work. We Houghs are still all alive over here for the time being, in case you were wondering. We're staying at home, social distancing and only going out for groceries, and we have plenty of toilet paper.

The girls had, until today, not left the house since their last day of school on March 13th (aside from walks and bike rides around the neighborhood, of course.) Kris and I decided that today, since the weather was so nice (sunny and in the high 50's), we'd drive them across town to the Chippewa Nature Center, in order to walk the trails and get outside in nature for awhile. If that name rings a bell, it's where the girls have gone on some Girl Scout outings or field trips in the past (I chaperoned one with Alayna back in 2016, and Kris chaperoned Abby's in 2019.)

And obviously I took over a hundred pictures with my phone of our two-hour walk. Give me some credit, folks.

Check it out. . .

Posed with aforementioned wig-wam (this whole area used to be the historical site of a Chippewa settlement in the greater Midland area.) We parked at the visitor center, and hit the trail around 12:30pm. Our friends, the Larson family, were supposedly there as well, but we never ran into them. There are a shit-load of trails back there.

We opted to go on the River Trail, as it's the most scenic, one of the longer continuous treks (at 3 miles), and, for the most part, runs along this river here (the name is below on a sign, I forget it off the top of my head -it meets up with the Tittabawassee at the Tridge, though.)

See the fork in the river, where the two separate rivers merge into one? The sign the ladies are checking out here talks about that.

There you go, there's your information. (You might have to zoom in to read it, though.)

Abby, peering through a tree's vagina.

And now Alayna's turn.

We could'v'e tackled this three-mile trail in probably a little over an hour if we had kept a steady pace, but with these two, it ended up taking waaaaay longer. They had to stop and climb on every cool-looking, fallen tree they came across.

This trail runs right up behind the historical Sinclair Farm, which I checked out once on Alayna's 2nd Grade Field Trip. We let the kids play around an old wood shed that was sitting right alongside the trail for a few minutes.

Posing with some wood (I really wanted to steal some - we're running super low right now.)

Getting artsy with some trees.

Kris photo-bombs yet another picture. Gotta love wives.

Back end of the old Sinclair homestead.

Some handsome guy in the woods.

Taking another break to sit on a tree. . . again.

Whenever they stopped to do this sorta shit, we'd have to move off the trail to allow other hikers to move past (you know, 'cause of Social Distancing and all that.) Good times.

And yes, I've been growing a beard. At first it was just as a joke, 'cause God knows I don't really have a reason to shave anymore - I'm one of those lucky few people who gets paid to sit at home and practically do nothing without having to file for unemployment (suddenly teaching doesn't sound so shitty, eh?) Now I've just gotten used to it and Kris is complaining that I look like a homeless man. . . . a handsome homeless man.

(Kris enjoys her selfies.)

More climbing atop fallen trees. . .

At this point we kinda put our foot down. We had been on the trail for an hour or so and had only gotten about one-third of the way - at the rate we were going, we'd be on the trail until dinner time.

(Abby has boundless energy.)

I feel like there needs to be some cheesy, shitty quote in white lettering over this pic. . .

At one point on our walk I bent down to pick up a stone and skip it across a pond we were passing by, and the girls thought it was straight-up sorcery or the like. So of course we all had to stop so I could give mini-lessons on how to skip stones across water. . .

(Neither kid could do it. Unsurprisingly.)

Another photo-op underneath this little grotto of brambles.

Stopping so that Alayna could empty the rocks from her shoe. This was at about the half-way mark, and Alayna was already complaining that she was bored, tired, hungry, thirsty, sore, etc. Gotta love tweens.

(I don't know what river this is.)

Abby contemplates the mysteries of life.

At about the two-mile marker, we came across this creepy-ass swamp that we had to tread carefully through. . .

We tried to warn them against doing so, but the girls insisted on crossing over to a large tree by scooting their butts across a fallen limb.

I really wanted somebody to lose their balance and fall into the water, but sadly neither did.

Out of the swamp at long last, we reached this man-made (I assume) land bridge.

Mom posin'

Again. No idea what the name of this river is.

Bringing up the rear. As usual.

More swamp. This was the big 'turtle area' of the Reserve (or so I'm told by the signs), and they had an observation platform that overlooked it that Abby wanted to check out.