Subtitle: Never Underestimate Your Own Back Yard.

We live in a very suburban residential area. You have to drive through five minutes of nothing but neighborhood to arrive at our house from the main road, and there’s not much space within all that that isn’t occupied by houses, front yards, or back yards.

However, we’d heard that at the end of our street, there was a secret trail into some rare woods. In the two and a half years that we’ve lived here, we’d never attempted to find or explore this trail, but we decided it was high time to put on our Dora Shoes and go exploring.

We set off on one of our evening-Daddy’s-home-and-we-all-need-a-change-of-pace walks.

We knew about where the trail was, but it wasn’t very easy to spot: It wasn’t much of a trail.
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We quickly dubbed the lack-of-trail as “Rubbish Trail”, because of the menacing sign right above it:

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It’s hard not to read with a British Accent when you encounter a sentence with the word “Rubbish” in it.

As soon as we stepped foot onto the trail, we heard water running. We knew adventure was afoot. We crossed Christmas Tree Curve:

IMG_8702(Do those count as rubbish??)

We beat back bushes, jumped over a humongous downed tree, and within no time, found this glorious sight:IMG_8664
(Notice the dots of reflection in the picture – that would be pollen. It was, after all, still pollen week.)

Ali and I immediately made our way out into the middle of the stream and sat down:

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While Chris went to explore upstream:

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What we didn’t see is what happened to him while he was upstream. He came back with a good side:IMG_8689

And a very, very bad side:IMG_8693…which made me feel pretty good, since I’m usually the clumsy one of the family.

Ali, however, was not impressed. Being the worry-wart that she is, she started moaning anytime he would walk on the rocks and and would repeat under her breath, “Be careful, Daddy…don’t fall!”

Which was quite fitting, since she gets all of her paranoia from her Daddy.

On the way back, we photographed the big log we had to climb over:

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…which would make an awesome Daddy/Daughter photo, if it didn’t look like Chris had a horrible case of the pit sweats, thanks to his fall.

We managed to make it past Christmas Tree Curve and out into the neighborhood again, where Ali was only slightly ashamed to be seen by all of the neighbors with her Daddy and his massive messiness:
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…but really, his look kinda went with the whole theme of “Rubbish Trail”.

14 thoughts on “Rubbish Trail.

  1. How awesome was that?! I can't believe you found a beautiful stream with little trickling falls at the end of your street. Lovely! You guys should hide out there often. I know two little boys who'd love to play there with Ali!

  2. What a fun discovery! That is really beautiful spot!

    I was thinking what a cute pic of Chris and Ali until I noticed the water marks. Hahaha :) Glad he didn't really hurt himself since that looks like it must have been quite the fall!

  3. I can't believe that's in your neighborhood!
    Maybe you should bring a change of clothes & some wipes for Chris next time :)

  4. what a great find. and i have to admit the good side and bad side is kind of funny.

  5. Oh my goodness, what a beautiful treasure to find hidden in your neighborhood! I had sooooo much fun playing in the woods as a kid. Not all the pics were working when I looked at the post, but from what I saw (aside from the nasty discarded Christmas trees) it looked like a fairytale land!

  6. Oh my goodness, what a beautiful treasure to find hidden in your neighborhood! I had sooooo much fun playing in the woods as a kid. Not all the pics were working when I looked at the post, but from what I saw (aside from the nasty discarded Christmas trees) it looked like a fairytale land!

  7. Oh, that's fantastic! I thought the dots were ghosties, but pollen makes far more sense…it's very pretty!

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