I remember when we used to live in TX, we would plan then save so we could go on one big trip a year. That wasn't fun at all. The six years we lived in TX has been the only time that I felt trapped. TX is so big that at the time it wasn't feasible for us to go on a three day weekend road trip whenever the kids had an extra day off. Either because we didn't have any trip money saved up or I wasn't able to get time off from work. We spent a lot of weekends at home. The only thing that saved us from dying of boredom especially during the summer months was that we lived in an awesome master planned community that had a lot to offer to its residents.
Although there's really not much to do in Tucson it's a good thing that Phoenix wasn't far and that San Diego was only a seven hour drive. Because of this, we still managed to do a lot of fun activities during our time there. That's when we got into going to farmers markets and U-pick farms.
Here in Washington there's endless things to do, just like back home in San Diego. Ever since I became a mother I always made it a point to do fun things over the weekend. I've learned how to plan family outings with little or no money needed whenever we weren't able to splurge.
In one week we visited two new parks ... two awesome parks at that! We've been here about a year and a half and we barely found out about these parks. I'm just glad that we now know about them.
The park we visited over the weekend was Seward Park which sits right off Lake Washington. There are two ways to reach this park. One way is to come from the Seattle side which you would first need to drive through somewhat of a bad area but then it gets nice. The other way is to come from Bellevue way. This is the best choice.
This park is super cool. It has several trails with the main one being a paved trail and not to mention Lake Washington surrounding the entire trail. Oh, and there's lots of trees that provide wonderful shade throughout.
This trail that we embarked on was a 2.4 mile loop. I didn't think much of it because I was too busy gawking at the water, boats and the houses along the shore. I was enjoying my walk, stopping whenever Riley stopped to pick up a flower or to pick up rocks. I was in no hurry whatsoever. I knew that Sydna and Nathan would get bored from all this stopping so I gave them the ok to go ahead of us and enjoy the trail at their own pace ... and so they left.
One thing I forgot to do before our walk was to stretch. BIG mistake!
It really was a nice day out even though I missed my clouds ... but there was a light breeze which made my walking experience an enjoyable one.
Sometimes the trail would get busy and other times there wasn't a soul in sight. That was nice.
During our walk, a lonesome butterfly flew up to Riley and circled around him, then it flew away and came back and rested on the dirt right in front of him. I've heard that spirits manifest themselves in butterfly form. Hmm. It is written that this park does have some interesting background to it, as in Spirits roaming the area. Anything is possible.
This girl had walked past us and I noticed that Riley was staring at the dog and as she kept walking and we walked a bit behind them Riley kept saying, "hi doggy, hi doggy" and that's when she stopped and let Riley pet him. I guess she figured that Riley wouldn't shut up unless she gave Riley the satisfaction of petting her dog. Lol.
We had been walking for a while and I noticed his cheeks getting red so I handed him his water. He liked walking along the small dirt path on the side.
Then, all of a sudden, the canopy of trees parted. A big chunk of Lake Washington was exposed. Gorgeous!
We saw several speeding boats, jet skies, canoes and kayaks!
But he was mostly interested in playing with rocks and getting his hands dirty.
So glad I remembered to put on sunblock on the both of us. The sun was out in full force.
As soon as I spotted a bench under a shady tree I sprinted towards it. By this point we had been walking for about an hour so I decided we would stop for a bit at mile post 1.5. I needed to rest and to refuel. We brought a light lunch and ate while we took in the scenery.
Sydna and Nathan came back and found us. After we were done eating we continued on our walk. As we were looking at boats I saw that Riley had stopped walking and sat down on the ground. His little legs were tired, poor thing. He was breathing heavy and so I asked Jacob if he could carry him. He didn't whine, I could just tell that he was exhausted and that made me feel bad. He was more than happy to be able to hitch a ride on daddy's shoulders.
We came across a dock. We saw ducks and geese resting on it then we glanced over at the lily pads and spotted ducklings and turtles. It was pretty neat to see.
The playground is near the parks entrance. Riley saw it as we drove past it to the parking lot and he asked to play ... we promised him that he would after our walk. So as soon as we came upon it and he saw it he made a run for it. I guess by this point he had regained his energy, lol.
I really liked this trail. No hills, it was paved, lots of shade, super nice scenery and I loved that it looped. Pretty cool that there were several restrooms along the way. Not for my sake ... it seems like the men in my life seem to always get the urge to pee when we're out.
This is another area around Lake Washington where there's a trail but less crowded. Looks very relaxing to me. I even told Jacob that we should come back and walk on this trail just the two of us next time we visit. Doesn't it look nice?
Leaving the Bellevue way. We love to drive on the floating bridge ... just not during high winds though.
This little guy was spent. He fell asleep fast once we got in the car. Nathan did too. We had to wake him up once we got home.
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