Ridgefield Wildlife Refuge - May 24, 2020

Today our adventure was inspired by seeing a friends pictures from the Ridgefield Wildlife Refuge.  This is one of the stops on the Scenic Route, but we didn't stop here before.  At the entrance to the refuge there is a fenced dog park, which could be fun to bring Frankie to another time.  Only the drive-through portion of the refuge is open, but when the trails open, the girls and I want to come back and explore there!

Since I was driving, Zoey was the designated photographer today.  This was perfect since she needed to take some outdoor photography to complete her Outdoor Art badge our troop worked on at our last virtual meeting.  

The drive itself takes about 30 minutes and offers lots of great photo ops!  Signs along the way remind you to stay in your car.  There are lots of areas to pull off for a "closer" view.  We saw turtle, frogs, dragonflies, various birds and ducks, and some deer!  Definitely a fun little adventure that we'll do again in the future.

Cedar Creek Grist Mill - May 16, 2020

For our adventure today, we decided to go shck-out one of the stops on the Scenic Route we didn't explore much of on our first go round.  Lily had said she wanted to explore the covered bridge area some more, so off we headed to Cedar Creek Grist Mill.  The mill building was closed, as I expected, but the trails were open.  It was a short adventure, taking us about 30 minutes to explore everything there was to see.  Definitely a great pit stop, but not much else.

I took a couple great pictures, but then we were on our way!

Family AdventureTtime!

Today is my hubby's Saturday.  So we decided to go on an adventure. I did a little research earlier in the week and decided we'd head up to the Mt. St Helen's Visitor Center area (the visitor center itself is closed due to COVID-19).  So, instead we checked out Seaquest State Park, which just reopened yesterday.

It took us just over 45 minutes to get there, with rain storms off and on the whole way.  When we pulled in there was not another car in sight.  The rain had tapered off, and it was mostly just dripping from the moss covered trees.  We put our jackets on and headed out to explore.

There was a couple trails, but this is really more of a campground with a day-use area.  Lily and I fell in love with the potential of Girl Scout activities that could happen there.  We found a trail head and started into the woods.

We saw a bunch of slugs, a couple worms, and tons of weird little mushrooms on fallen logs.  We also saw a jackrabbit and a tiny mole that looked like it had been dropped by a bird from the trees above. There was also a cute little "Yurt Village" that we all thought looked like a lot of fun.

                                                  

Once we explored as much as we could there, we decided to venture back to Moulton Falls on the Scenic Route we took last week.  From Seaquest it took us about an hour to get to the falls in Yacolt.  We hiked down to the rocks at the falls and explored a bit before heading home.

It was a fun day, and an easy day trip.  A great little escape from being stuck at home.