Spring Break: Part 2

Every year around Miles birthday, we do a beach trip. It worked perfectly to do it during Spring Break this year. I had also caught glimpse from some local photographers on social media of a beautiful place near the beach called Drift Creek Falls and I knew we had to go explore there! And it sure did exceed all our expectations! There is a 1.25 mile hike to the falls and the suspension bridge. And all the reviews said it was super family friendly!

Sidenote: I had told Miles that I wanted to get some 5-year-old photos of him on this trip, so he then decided to do a million poses and ask me to take his picture, he also got super muddy so I may take more official photos later, however there are still a lot of posed Miles photos...

 Moving on, The hike was pretty family friendly. There were quite a few muddy spots which we expected, Edwin didn't want to hold our hand a lot of the time and there were some ledges but it all turned out okay.

More of Miles' posing ideas...

But the scenery was amazing!

 Synchronized running!

And more signs of Spring, I bet this trail looks quite a bit different in the late Spring/ Summer.

Charles on his throne.

King Miles

 Ham

And then all of a sudden, the scenery changed into this hanging moss forest, it was pretty magical!

And then we finally made it to the suspension bridge. Edwin even walked the whole way, super easy "hike." And I don't feel like my photos do this place justice. It really was amazing. The boys loved the bridge and were fascinated by the waterfall.

 Don't worry, the bridge was over land where Edwin is standing, Max is just always practicing acrobatic skills with the boys.

 

Before hiking back, we had some snacks.

This smile, it just cracks me up!

We decided to play on the bridge more before hiking back too!

The bridge did shake when we walked on it so Charlie confessed to being a little terrified!

 So the weather was exciting, it was sunny but also a little drizzly on and off. You probably can't tell, but it is raining in this photo (and there were rain drops on my lens) The rain looked majestic in the sun.

 I think you can keep going and get to the bottom of the waterfall, but we will have to do that another day, we wanted to leave enough time to play on the beach.

So we went back. Edwin had hiked through his nap so Max put him on his back and he fell asleep.

He always likes to be in front!

 So Many Ferns!

 We snacked on these sour apple leaves throughout the hike, the boys thought it was amazing, but I don't get why they will eat these and not spinach. They really aren't that different.

Learning a little something on camouflaging yourself from Mountain man Max!

Well, we made it back to the car and even though it was mostly uphill on the way back, there were no complaints from the boys. WIN!

Then we started our drive to the beach, and we were happy to finally see a rainbow.

We made it to Pacific City. There was a beautiful mixture of sunshine and rainclouds, yet we didn't get rained on at the beach at all! Another WIN!

 Dune races

 I'm an amateur sunset photography but the skies did not disappoint!

As the sun was setting, Max set up a fire so we could roast hot dogs and s'mores!

 We stayed until we ran out of wood and baseball cards to burn. But then, near us on the beach, a woman was practicing fire dancing, so we got to enjoy her show and I tried to photograph it the best I could without the needed photography gear.

After 10pm, we decided we should probably start driving home. SO that is what we did and the boys slept for most of the drive!
Now I write all this down so our boys can never say we didn't do anything fun. Also Max and I were discussing how it is so fun to see the excitement our boys exude for the tiniest things, like finding the perfect walking stick, jumping in a mud puddle, throwing rocks in a creek, eating sour apple leaves and so on. We know these are the good days we are supposed to savor so we really try to soak it in. Anyway, it was a good day!