Hawk Ridge Hike

A lovely sunny weekend with a cool breeze and hint of fall = raptor migration!

And a great time to go play outside. Leaving our house work behind (although we did manage to get quite a bit done this weekend)...we set out for an in town adventure. You gotta love having views like this only minutes from your front door. For folks not familiar with Duluth - we live somewhere in the bottom right corner of this picture.

While at Hawk Ridge we saw a Cooper's hawk and a kestrel released. Very cool. As some one who can really only identify eagles and chickadees, I'm always impressed by the folks up there who can spot a spec against the blue sky and then identify it as a "rare ridonculous hawk with 1/3 juvenile plumage...and I can't be quite certain but I think it ate a mouse last Tuesday. You can tell by the way it holds it's wings just 0.4% more to the left."

I may be selling myself short as a naturalist as I'm sure I know more than your randomly plucked stranger but I'm always impressed by bird nerds. So if you are one - kudos to you. And now that my secret is out you can probably make up most of what you say and I'll believe you.

We hiked down the hill toward Amnity Creek where we stopped on an old structure made of concrete and had a snack. We also discovered that Lucy's just the right size to fit in my backpack. Makes an awesome spontaneous hands free baby bed. For regular blog followers you may think that she looks enormous. Three things contribute to that effect: 1. She is still eating like a champ and weighs in at well over 13 lbs. 2. She is wearing a fleece that is a tad too big 3. She's now able to fit into her cloth diapers and they significantly increase her...well let's just say that those diapers do in fact make her butt look big.

Wide eyed and in awe with the world. AND in awe of her parents which I have to say is fantastic. She actually giggled at me the other day when I was doing something silly. My daughter thinks I'm funny! Awesome. The true test will be - does she think I'm funnier than her father...jury is still out but I imagine in the end Ryan will win. He's pretty ridiculous.

Hiking in the Moby wrap. She still likes this for the most part unless there is lots to look at. We tried her in the Baby Bjorn again this weekend so that she can look out and see things. It went pretty well once she got settled. I think having her legs dangle freaks her out a bit. She helped Ryan do some yard work this morning and was pretty engaged until she fell asleep.