Follow The Blue Blaze Path

Sing with me...Follow, follow, follow, follow, follow the blue blaze path!

I assigned Dan the job of finding us someplace fun to go hiking over the weekend.  He picked Bennet Springs outside of Lebanon, MO (which is the little bit bigger town just southwest of us).

It sounded like a neat place to explore, that is, until we saw this sign.

Yeah.  You read that right.  3.6 miles to the tunnel, means 3.6 miles back to our car.  We set off with positive attitudes thinking we'd go as far as we could.  Dan really thought the kids could make it.

We found some fun places to rest and play along the way.

We saw a whole lot of nature.  There were butterflies everywhere.  We saw pretty flowers and came across two turtles.  We think we heard deer, but we never saw them.

This huge tree lent us it's roots to use as a picnic table for lunch.

At this point, we'd hiked about a mile and a half...still smiling.

At this point, we were maybe at 3 miles...not smiling.

And finally, my second favorite sign!  We made it!

I must admit, the tunnel was pretty cool.  We checked it out for about 20 minutes, before we started back (the opposite way - so another 4.1 miles).

The kids whined and complained a little on the way in, but the pretty blue sky got covered up with grey clouds on the way out.  We only really saw one good bolt of lightening, but we heard lots of thunder.  It succeeded in scaring the kids and in making their feet move double fast.  It also rained on our heads, but the trees worked as great umbrellas.  I bet we were walking 15-17 minute miles at the end. 

Overall, we hiked 7.7 miles in 4 hours and 45 minutes with breaks here and there.  Dan and I were  proud of the kids.  We were so thrilled to get back to this trailhead...

...that is until we started looking and realized we'd walked through a tick breeding area.  I'm not kidding.  Even with bug spray, we were coated in teeny tiny baby ticks.  We undressed in the laundry room and our clothes went straight into the washer on the sanitize cycle and into the dryer on high heat for an hour.  We went straight into the showers and looffa'ed off the ticks.  I bet Jaelyn and I had 50 of them on us.  We've found a few today and will be doing tick checks for days to come.  I've washed sheets and vacuumed just encase any fell off of us.  I'm still itchy all over just thinking about it.  I told Dan he needs to bug bomb his car.  I don't know how he's going to get them all out.

Rich - don't get any ideas about us taking you here. I'm N-E-V-E-R going back to Bennet Springs again.  Ewwww.