Long Hunter State Park

During quiet time/nap time one afternoon, Auntie K took us to Long Hunter State Park so we could do the Storybook Trail. We got off to a bit of a rocky start because we made it to the visitor's center just as it closed for lunch—and they were very serious about closing for their lunch break. We could see them all in there...and they could see us...but there was no way they were going to ask us if we needed help with anything. 

The bathrooms were locked from the outside, only accessible through the main entrance (which was locked). We had a map, but weren't quite sure what we were looking for because the Storybook Trail wasn't on the map. 

So we had our lunch and waited for the doors to open. 

An Amazon delivery person came by with some packages and they opened the door for them and while the door was open I passive-aggressively made a remark about how I couldn't wait for the next five minutes to be up so that we could finally take our toddler to the bathroom...

And the lady working inside must have heard me because after the five minutes were up and she finally unlocked the door for us, I took Phoebe to the bathroom and the lady made a point of finding Kelli to tell her that the bathroom doors were open, should we have needed to go. 

They weren't. 

But that's okay. We went potty and figured out where to go (kind of). When we got to the right parking lot we just had to find the "hidden" trailhead for the Storybook Trail. It, again, wasn't on any of the park maps. But we were pretty intimidated by the bulletin board, so perhaps we didn't look closely enough...

We decided to visit the playground by the lake, hypothesizing that the trailhead might be somewhere around the playground. They had some interesting slides there!

This triple slide, for example, sent the kids flying off every bump on the far right, was super steep in the middle, and extra bumpy on the left:

Here's Zoë finally going down:

Benjamin was like, "It's not that steep. I won't be scared to go down..." And then he made this face:

Here's Miriam's face after Benjamin pushed her to get her going:

And here's me going down the slide as well:

We looked all around the playground and didn't find a trailhead. Eventually I looked online to see if I could figure out where it was and they did have a map of it online, with a pin dropped. So we followed my phone to the dropped pin—and, lo, there was the trailhead.

We walked around and read the story (about the water cycle):

Phoebe would yell, "PAGE TURN!" after I finished reading each page and then would run off to the next sign. 

Zoë found some papers in the Little Free Library at the trailhead, telling the kids that if they wrote their own water cycle story and took it to the visitor's center they could get a prize! So Zoë wrote about what a water droplet might experience in the Sahara Desert and Alexander wrote about what a water droplet might experience in the rain forest. Phoebe drew a "hurtado" (hurricane/tornado) and a bunch of "baby" raindrops. 

We took a picture of the looming storm behind the lake and then headed back to the visitor's center (we'd later go outside to watch a stunning electrical storm off in the distance, from Rosie's driveway—they can see so much sky in their neighbourhood).

Kelli had Miriam drive and coached her to back into a parking stall!

And then we went into the visitor's center...and that same employee who had left us locked outside rushed up to us and said, "Oh, my gosh! The bathrooms were locked from the outside! I didn't realize that! I'm so sorry! I'm new here!"

"That's okay," I said. "We just didn't know what to do because we're from out of state and haven't ever been here before."

That kind of orientation is what a visitor's center is for, in my opinion. But in their opinion it is not what the visitor's center is for at lunch time. (In my opinion the visitor's center was empty both times we were there...aside from us...so it seemed extreme to close it down for a full hour's lunch break for all three employees in the building...like...take turns having a lunch break? Or...just...stop eating for a minute to answer a quick question...or to let a toddler use a toilet?)

Anyway, so it all worked out. I appreciated her apology. 

The kids got stickers and junior ranger books. I think they've all lost their stickers. But Alexander has been carefully filling out every page of his junior ranger booklet. 

And it was probably good for us to get out some of our wiggles. I think we had more wiggles than Rosie and Austin were used to...or at least...they weren't used to seven-, ten-, and thirteen-year-old wiggles...which can be more...aggressive than two- and four-year-old wiggles.