Oak Mountain State Park

I have been wanting to have a day with the boys for awhile, and this morning I decided that I would take Sam and Davis to Oak Mountain to do some hiking…Just us boys. It was a beautiful day, and we had a cool breeze, so it was perfect for our little adventure. We began our hike at the Treetop Nature Trail.

We had not been to Oak Mountain in 3 years, and this was the trail we went on last time. It was fun…they have a large walkway built up high in the trees to give you a feel of being up with the birds. Then there are large cages along the path where they have owls, hawks and vultures.

We got there at just the right time, and saw the birds getting fed. Mice and Rats…Davis was so excited when he saw one bird grab a rat…”Look Dad, he got the big one”. So we finally made it through the “treetop” pathway, and I let Sam decide if we were to take the trail back down to the van, or the 0.6 mile trek up to the Wildlife rescue center.

Pretty easy decision for him, up we went. The boys had a blast…running ahead of me along the creek that ran near the trail. Then Davis caught on a root and skinned his knee. This held us up for about 10 minutes…He is very dramatic. But finally we made it all the way to the top…with Davis riding on my shoulders. He told me that “His knees were hurting”.

At the top we visited the Wildlife rescue center and saw all the birds and baby birds they were nursing back to health. We also saw some snakes and taxidermied animals. This was also a good time for us to rest and finish our crackers and juice.

The way down began ok, until Sam tripped over his own feet and scraped his knee. Now this is the knee that was already scraped two days ago pretty bad, so this new fall got it bleeding pretty bad. Sam was tough though, and lucky thing is that a lady and her children were coming up the hill at the same time as the fall and she had a bandaid, wipees, and Neosporin. So we bandaged Sam up, and he was no longer able to bend his knee without it “hurting so bad”…so up on my shoulders he went. We made it back down to a narrow portion of the trail with a steep drop to the creek on my left, and apparently Sam thought I was going to fall in so he started reaching for trees to hold onto. Laughing, I set him down and he walked the rest of the way no problem.

After making it back down to the van, we drove to the playground (Oak Mountain could use some upgrades here, basically just a slide and 6 swings). This went pretty well, and the kids did not want to leave. So Sam just kept sliding and I kept pushing Davis on the swing…until Davis for some reason thought that he no longer needed to hold on. I gave a gentle push and then watched him flip out of the swing backwards and land on his head….AGHHHHHH. I picked him up quickly and he went ballistic. But after about 10 minutes of crying/gagging/screaming, he was OK. But it was time to leave. Our adventure was over. The boys are both ready for the next Hiking Trip though.