Calliope and I went on a short hike in Tilden Regional Park this afternoon. I was up in Tahoe for most of the weekend, so it was nice to get some Dad and daughter time. Plus Mikey really appreciates some time to himself especially when he has been on duty for most of the weekend.
We did a short loop starting at the parking lot for Little Farm. We headed down Lower Packrat Trail. Not more than five minutes in, Calliope suddenly got totally scared; so scared, that she was having trouble telling me when she was scared of. After some calming words from Dad we continued on. As far as I could tell at the time, something in the bushes/branches spooked her. A little while down the trail, we came across a father and son coming up the trail. The dad was very excited to tell us about a bee hive in the trees just around the next bend. We thanked him for the heads up and continue, only to have Calliope freak out again within a few steps. It turned out that she is still a bit freaked out by the bee sting from our last major hike back in the fall. After calming her down again, we finally made it to the bee hive which is way way up in the tree and she was ok looking at it; she even made a bzzzz sound. 🙂 This pattern of getting spooked continued to happen a few more times. In reality, I think she was equating any flying insect (fly, gnat, etc) with a bee. So I began stopping every time I saw a flying insect; we would sneak up on it and looked at it really close and I would explain what it was (emphasizing how it wasn’t a bee). Eventually she got past the freak outs.
We finally make it to Jewel Lake which was very picturesque today; there were a lot of people on the trail but it seems to clear out once we hit the lake. After our snack, we set off to finish off the loop along the Sylvian Trail. This allowed for a bit of elevation climb and a longer loop. We had not taken more than 10 steps away from the lake, when the first of many pee breaks occurred. And of course, we are nowhere near an outhouse. Calliope had been sucking down water (nearly a quarter liter) during the entire first leg of the hike (she loves her backpack with integrated hydration pack). It felt that we had to find a pee spot about every 15-20 minutes on the way back. Dad was a bit over it by the time we got back to the car. I need to figure out some what of distracting her from the water as we are hiking; I was very happy that she was hydrated, but this was a bit much.
We finished up our hike at the Little Farm. Most of the animals were in the barn for the night since we got there a bit late. However, the cows were out and we met a very nice boy who shared his celery with Calliope to feed the cows. We also said hi to the rabbits, the goats and got to pet the sheep.
It was a beautiful day in Tilden, and I love that I got to spend some good quality time with my daughter after being away for a few days.
Total Distance: 2.55 mi
Total Time: 02:32:20
Moving Time: 01:19:22
Average Speed: 1.0 mph
Average Moving Speed: 1.9 mph
Max Speed: 5.8 mph
Min Elevation: 472.44 ft
Max Elevation: 774.28 ft
Elevation Gain: 301.84 ft
Recorded: 3/17/13, 15:16:25 PDT