Girdwood

Yesterday was my first full day with Van after he dropped his nap. He's still on the border, he could nap if nothing is going on, but sleeps so much better at night without it, so I wanted to try and keep him busy all day.

So we drove down to Girdwood to try the Winner Creek Trail.

I packed us a lot of snacks for the hike, peanut butter and jelly waffles, no bake cookies, bananas, and crackers. But we were both hungry when we arrived in town at 11:30 so we went to Jack Sprat for a quick lunch so we could save our snacks for the hike.

Van ate a fruit plate and we split a bacon blue cheese burger with yam fries. 

Then it was off to the trail. Since I had never been before, we drove around quite a bit before I realized where to park and where the trail was. Getting to the trailhead was such a hassle, I was worried about our trip. But Van does way better when there are less choices of directions to go. So once we were on the trail, things were much better. 

One small problem was that bikes are not aloud on the trail, but since I was on foot and only Van was on a bike I thought it would be ok.

Unfortunately this is the only picture I have of Van biking, although we spent at least 3 hours just biking. He was fast and keeping up with him and keeping him on the boardwalk was a full time task. Especially on the downhills on the way home! He went so fast, we had a blast. He was wearing his hoodie at that point, so I would chase him and pretend I wasn't holding his hood. But luckily I was, I had a couple great saves. 

He giggles when he starts going fast and I'm chasing him which makes me laugh, so it was a great return trip, we laughed a lot.

We were on the trail for about 4.5 hours, but we did a lot of stopping to snack and play.

Not surprisingly, the no bake cookies were his favorite snack.

We played on every tree stump.

(this one was Van's rocketship)

Unfortunately we didn't make it to the hand tram, but the trail we were on, including our hike from the car, would have been about 5.5 miles round trip, which is a long way for little legs. My guess is we made it 3.5 miles.

I guess if you can start at Crow Creek and then it's only 1 mile in, so that's what we'll do next time. 

Still this was a fun hike and a fun day. 

We played for a bit at Girdwood's nice playground, but Van was really tired. He slept for the drive home from 5 - 5:30, but then stayed up until 8:30 and slept really well all night. Up after 7AM! His latest yet.