Hiking in the woods.

We live in such a beautiful area and on Sunday we decided to go for a hike. The days are getting noticeably shorter, the crispness of the air at night almost requires turning heat on in the house, we are almost done with our summer clothes...all that means that winter will be here before we know it and we just wanted to enjoy the last warm days outdoors.
The girls got their backpacks with some snacks. Ivana took our nature guides and Leona took some paper and pen "to make notes", as she said.
It has not been raining recently, but surprisingly we found 3 beautiful big mushrooms, that we just couldn't leave behind, and I used them in the evening to make cream of mushrooms with chicken for dinner. Yummmm....
The trail was nice and easy in the beginning and I especially was enjoying the peaceful and non stressful hike. Mirek had a 27lbs baby on his back, I carried a camera, of course. Then a bit further it became more challenging on the trail, with some ups and downs, and rock climbing and all that "give me a hand" kind of thing. It took us about an hour to walk 3 miles to the falls, Milana fell asleep on the way and slept through almost all the hike and woke up on the way back.
We had some really exciting finding during the hike. Mirek spotted a trout in the stream by the water falls, the girls saw a frog and a toad, Ivana found a snake skin about 4 feet long (apparently the snake was pretty big!), and we also saw alive baby snake that I almost stepped on. Unfortunately, the battery on my camera died out, so we couldn't snap a picture, but we remembered reading about the snakes in PA and we are almost certain it was a a venomous Northern Copperhead that are common in the area. We'll just have to look it up one more time to confirm it, since we tried to remember the markings on the head and the body of the snake.
Ivana was so happy with her finding that she carried the snake skin all 3 miles back to the car, and now we are thinking what to do with it to preserve it.

So, we successfully completed 6 miles hike and Mirek was giving out "Hi-5s" to the girls by the car and praising them for being such great hikers and all. I felt like I deserved a praise myself!
"Hi-5" to a eight months pregnant hiker!