Hide and Seek

The park finally re-opened. I went to work for one day for a couple of hours and then had a 3 day weekend. So we had some time on our hands and decided to use it to do a little bit of hiking. So we drove up the KT road and out to the Wildcat Canyon Trailhead. It was a beautiful day and a little bit cool, but comfortable. I was carrying Conrad, Jacqueline was carrying our stuff, and Zyla was carrying herself. This was an ambitious plan as Zyla was going all the way out to the Peaks and back which would be a 4.5 mile roundtrip. She did well for about the first half mile and then seemed to lose interest. We tried bribing her with "bunnies" like we did on the Coalpits hike, but she was less interested.
There is just so much that you can do to convince a 3 year old that continuing to hike was in her best interest. So we tried different motivation and played hide and go seek. I would hide and Zyla would come find me. Then she would run ahead and hide and I would come find her. Then we would both hide together and Mom would have to find us. Then Mom would have to hide, etc... This continued for miles on the trail. Zyla just never got sick of this game.
 It was not a day of enjoying nature and the beauty that surrounded us, no it was a day of hiding in the wilderness. Luckily we really had much of the place to ourselves, so there was no issue with her running around. There was one couple and we actually kept pretty good pace with them. In no time, we were at the end of the trail and taking pictures. We stopped for a bit here to enjoy the view and have a snack, but we were soon on our way hiding and seeking our way back.
Zyla found this enjoyable for the first mile or so and then eventually she got extremely tired. For the last mile, Jacqueline carried her about half the time as she was spent.
Still an excellent day for her moving well and really fast with her parents pretty tired after the hike also having to add a bunch extra by hiding in the woods. Really fun day with some excellent pictures coming out of it.