Anderson Road Fitness Trail

Or, our first "hike" as a family of four! We are now a family of four! Yay!! It's been amazing and wonderful and I can't believe our little family has grown by one.

Now that our family has grown, and I can walk more than ten feet without feeling exhausted, we really want to make an effort to get outdoors more. Hiking, camping, biking, I want to do it all!

In order to start off easy for this recovering mama, we chose the Anderson Road Fitness Trail which is paved and just over a mile.  While I would probably never visit this trail again, I'm so glad this is the first one we chose because when we passed the 1/2 mile marker, I felt like we had already walked five miles... who knows what would have happened if we had gone on a real hike!

STUD!

Brenden wrangled Kian and Nova while I had sweet girl in the baby sling.

 When you look at the map, most of the trail goes right along  Percy Priest Lake, but in reality you don't have much of a view because of all the trees.  They do have several cut offs with benches where you can go to sit and stare.

After the 1 mile marker, you walk on the road back to the parking lot.  Not ideal with a dog and a stroller. But we made it or more specifically, I did it! I walked a whole mile without taking a break..what an accomplishment ;) This is just the start though, I can't wait to get out there more and push myself. 

Hiking Tennessee / Cedars of Lebanon

Hiking Tennessee / Narrows of the Harpeth

Somebody loves a Honeycrisp

Now that Kian is older and winter is over, we are trying to get out more.  One of our favorite things to do when we lived in Hawaii was go hiking and we decided that now was the perfect time to take Kian on his first hike.
We drove out to Harpeth River State Park which is about 30 minutes from downtown.  I followed these directions and they were perfect.  We did notice that there was another trailhead closer to the falls but this is already a really short hike so we didn't feel any need to park closer.
We all really enjoyed this trek, even Kian! It is absolutely beautiful in Nashville right now, everything is green and the weather is PERFECT.

Cedars of Lebanon

We went on a hike!

There's not a lot to say about the hike.

Afterwards we saw a sign for a wild turkey farm that said it was only 2 miles away. Being lovers of wild turkey we said "Let's go!!!" There was no turkeys there. It was just a wedding venue that was misrepresenting itself as a farm of turkeys. Bastards.

Manoa Falls

Manoa Falls is a short hike in the valley that leads to a small waterfall.  It is usually very crowded with tourists. 

We've done this hike a couple times before so we just stopped at the waterfall for a brief moment before heading back down.  The best part about this hike is just a few feet past the trailhead when you suddenly walk into a big valley filled with trees like the ones in the picture above.  I love the way those trees covered in vines look. 

Pillbox

Pillbox! This is one of Brenden's favorite hikes.  We hiked it in April,  and in May we took Brynn and Jeremy there. So of course, Brenden wanted to take Jason "the guy who's done everything in Hawaii" Derck to do the hike. The morning before Derck left we took him out to Kailua for this sunrise hike.  The boys hiked while I sat in the car and slept.  They had fun! and Derck was impressed, not an easy feat.  

After the hike we drove into Kailua town and had Breakfast at Cinnamon's which we highly recommend for anyone who visits Kailua.  The food was great, and the service was incredible! We only ate the things they are known for (eggs florentine, guava pancakes & red velvet pancakes) and we were not disappointed.  Go there. Eat. Now. 

Then Derck left and we were sad.  Come back again! 

Kaena Point

look at those tan legs!!

Back in November while Jason Derck was visiting, we decided to do a sunset hike out on the west side. I have to say when we started planning this hike we were misinformed. First of all Oahu revealed said if you come from the North side and there hasn't been rain, the road is two wheel drive and you can drive all the way to within 1/2 a mile of Kaena Point.  Lies, nothing but lies! This road is 4 wheel drive all the time.  And if you really think you can do it in two wheel drive I hope your car is lifted like two feet.  

Anyways once we got there we realized we couldn't drive so we walked.  The walk isn't that terrible but I would recommend wearing shoes.  It took us around an hour to get to the point and then we waited 45 minutes for sunset.  The sunset was beautiful, of course. As soon as the sun dipped below the horizon we started back trying to make it as far as possible before it was dark.  We didn't make it very far.  I think we walked 45 minutes in the dark back to our car, and had someone not been pulling out at the moment we made it to the parking lot, we would of walked past it.