Today the kids and I continued our hike-every-mile-of-the-Trinity-River-between-Ft-Worth-and-Dallas project by hiking this stretch of trail:
We haven’t figured out our pick-up and drop-off arrangements yet, so our distances are still limited by the fact that we have to backtrack every mile of trail that we cover. Still working on a solution for that.
Perfect weather for a hike, with just a touch of fall coolness in the air.
We met a guy on the trail, a retiree who volunteers his time to the parks and helps keep track of the local wildlife. He is so tuned into the bobcat population that he knows all of the individual bobcats who live in the area and is concerned that six of them have gone missing in the past few months. We ran into him twice, in different places on the trail, once on our way out and once on our way back, and each time there was a different young bobcat hanging out with him. First this pretty girl…
…and then this gorgeous boy:
We also saw a couple of armadillos. They are cuter in real life than I expected. They look like fat squirrels wearing armor.
Other wildlife sightings included a great blue heron…
…lots of pretty butterflies and about a gazillion grasshoppers everywhere.
It’s kind of amazing, the abundance of wildlife that thrives here in the middle of the Metroplex. When we first decided to move here I worried that the kids and I would miss the “great outdoors,” but that definitely hasn’t been an issue. City people really seem to appreciate their green spaces. Probably for the same reason the kids and I do — no matter how much you love all the benefits of civilization, sometimes you just need to walk in the woods and relax.
An Invincible Summer 