We took advantage of the beautiful weather last weekend and spent most of it outside. Friday night we splashed around in the creek at Centennial Park, with plans to hike Saturday morning. I prefer going to farther out destinations when my husband can join us, for fear of getting totally lost and ending up hauling 60+ pounds of kid over my shoulders, so we headed out to Warren County and started exploring.
I dropped off some household donations at Central Iowa Shelter and Services and then pulled up my interactive map in an effort to find somewhere new to explore nearby. Lundy Acres in Indianola popped up and we headed out. You can click that link for more pictures – but it was a cute little loop trail with lots of shade and neat big trees. It was a little buggy with a slow-moving creek running nearby, but nothing awful.
We found cool fungi and lots of tracks, leading me to google the difference between a bobcat and dog tracks (do you know what the main one is? see it here!). With such a short trail and no other places to explore on paths, we pulled my map back up to see what else was nearby.
Nearby was one that I’d heard of before, Zo-El Annett Woods in Indianola. They had a display board with the perfect reminder, so we started a new geocaching challenge, the Warren County wildflower search! This was also a loop trail with more elevation changes and neat scenery, with at least two bridges including one long suspension bridge. We found both caches easily and are ready to take on the rest of the challenge!
I spotted a tree frog from the car!! Finding wildlife is my #1 favorite thing about hiking so this was an awesome start. We also found some neat tiny little mushrooms and a toad along the trail.
We have found tree frogs before, at the Maquoketa Caves and on Sycamore Trail, but it was so cool to see this one well camouflaged. It indulged us as we checked it out and let it crawl all over us, such a cute little guy. We are excited to find more wildflower caches and get exploring again soon – see what the cards looked like here.