Hiking

Wow! We enjoyed the most amazing nature hike Today. We have not been out hiking for about a month due to sickness, but today it was a beautiful morning with clear sunshine and cool breezes blowing and we were all healthy. Because of the recent rain I thought we may find frogs in the little pond not far from our house. We took the steep but short route up the street which was very quiet this morning aiming to get to the frogs at the end of the hike so we wouldn't have to carry them all the way. (it was a 2 1/2 hour adventure).
We bought water on the way and put it in our back packs and then turned off the main road to a side road with a wide field off to the right. There we hunted for grasshopper to feed the chickens and I took allot of pictures of cactus in winter. Then we hiked up through a little village and out onto the new road above a very picturesque little valley. We opted to take the stairs down to the valley instead of the road and do some bouldering over large rocks. The boys are at just the right age for us all to enjoy the hiking. I did very little helping in climbing and they were so familiar with the area they just tackled it and were up one rock and down the other, oooohhing and ahhhing at the things they found.
Once on more flat land we stopped to pick “sider” berries a small apple like fruit the size of a pea. The boys hunted for the desired fruit and I took a rest on a rock in the shade looking out over the valley and enjoyed the quiet gentle breeze.

Soon, we started to head home and Max saw a small pile of fresh cow dung and several dung beetles actively making it into balls and rolling the balls away. We had done a lap book on the dung beetle in the fall but had never in real life seen them at work! It was so fascinating.

We stayed a long while here just admiring their great work, and remembering the things we had studied. What a great moment! The lapbooks we made we found free here.

                                                      

After taking a long look at the dung beetles rolling their dung balls, we headed down to the pond and looked for frogs. There were no frogs today but as we lingered a while throwing rocks in the water and hunting for large grasshoppers we were interrupted by a herd of goats coming to get a drink of water. Some little girls came over and were talking with us when I noticed the shepherd was fiddling around with the hind end of one of the goats. Turns out the mother was giving BIRTH!!!! We rushed over to watch and were able to witness the whole thing.

The shepherd was in a bit of a hurry because the birth had happened as they were out grazing along the road. He simply helped the mama clean off the little fellow, and picked it up said good-bye and went on home. It was sooooo amazing!!! I was stunned it happened just there along the road where we were walking! We were so excited the last bit home was not torturous as usual but we all raced home to tell Dad what we had seen!!!
It was a great day!