If you are already down near the Delaware beaches, there are a TON of awesome adventures awaiting you! Baby O and I visited Holts Landing State Park while big brother and Daddy went on a boat ride for Father’s Day.
Upon first inspection, it seemed as though there wasn’t much there to do. There’s a boat ramp, a picnic pavilion with a huge fire pit, a fishing pier and a few trails. Like usual, I just started wandering around without looking at any maps (which I do NOT recommend) and the first trail we happened upon was not stroller friendly but I figured a little mud on the tires never hurt anything…
It ended up going nowhere though so we headed back towards the parking lot. One of the cool things about hiking in southern DE at a park near the water is that you can often find shells, crabs, and even footprints in the sand! It’s a great opportunity to quiz the kiddos on who they think had been there before them.
Eventually we found the trail, which was much more stroller friendly that the first!
As soon as we headed in to the woods I knew I would have to break out the bug spray. If you follow my Facebook page, you may have seen that I am working on a review of kid-safe insect repellents and originally I was going to save sharing any of them until the end of my evaluation but I know this time of year the bugs can be brutal and you NEED to use something on your adventures. My main concern is always ticks and mosquitoes, and for those this is what I have been using lately:
It’s cheap and deet-free, AND it works! We first tried it out when we were getting eaten alive by noseeums and I was sold. Now that we’ve had frequent tick encounters, insect repellants are more crucial than ever. I don’t put it on our faces, only arms and legs. Even though we had protection from the usual suspects, the biting flies were intense! This year has been the worst year for flies I have ever seen.
As we walked along the trail, baby O quickly became restless in the stroller and demanded to walk so I obliged. Because the trail was lined with pine trees, there were cones littering the ground which he simply could NOT pass up. He requested a “buck” AKA bucket, which thankfully I had, and began collecting every. single. one. We didn’t make it much farther on the trail after this because it was time to go and he moves approximately 5 feet an hour when he’s out of the stroller so we will have to head back a different time to walk the full trail. I did want to swing by the fishing pier on our way to the car though and as soon as O saw water he immediately retrieved his pinecone collection from the stroller. Like his brother, he loves to toss things in to any body of water we come across. In this case it was a win-win because he got to do something he loves, and I didn’t have a bunch of pine cones rolling around in the back of my car. Bonus: pine cones float, so we got to watch them drift away!
Aaaand…slightly on topic… I am also paranoid about the boys getting sunburned so I thought I would share my favorite hat with you. I try to get them to keep them on (easier said than done) especially at the beach and pool, but also any time we are outside. They come in a variety of sizes/colors and often there are matching swimsuits too! O has a blue one on in the photo above.
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