November Hikes

I wrote recently about our October hikes and really didn't think we'd be taking many in November, but it's been a surprisingly warm first part of November, and we've been trying to take advantage of it for as long as we can.

On Sunday afternoon we decided to go by the woods near our house to feed the geese. Well, we got a pretty late start and didn't see any geese near the pond. We saw a few deer playing across a field, but when we started walking towards them, we heard the police car making its rounds and were kicked out of the woods. It was only 5:00, but already the sun had almost set. It's always a shock to me every year to get used to this.

But today we more than made up for our failed woods hike. Steve came home early from a meeting downtown, so we drove down to the Fullersburg Woods next to the Old Graue Mill.

We brought bread with us and found one duck to feed.

The kids we running, and climbing, and surprisingly Jared didn't want to be carried that much by Steve.

I don't have any pictures of it (they turned out way too dark), but we ran into a family of deer. I have never seen deer run so close to me before. It really was a thrilling feeling. We saw the most beautiful buck with these huge antlers. We crept as silently as we could to the edge of the pond where the deer dipped their heads into the water on the other side of us, and then bent their heads up to stare at us, too.

We went into the nature center, but they were closing up just as we walked in. We talked about how we must come back in the snow, all bundled up, to walk in the woods once again, and not tell ourselves to wait until next spring.