olive's first photo walk.

It's a little silly and surprising, seeing as bogs are one of my most favorite things ever, but I have never taken Olive to the Quaking Bog, just a few minutes from our house.  I was debating if we should walk. It's a short drive but, according to my phone, a 51 minute walk.  I assumed I would have to go to the bathroom during the walk.. let along during our time there and our walk home.  I'm not as lucky as Olive - being a toddler comes with perks like travel potties.  So we drove.

We got ready at home and as soon as I grabbed my camera Olive ran to find hers.  She snapped a few photos while putting her shoes on and requested that I take her photo with her camera.

I put two quarters in our meter, which Olive claimed was only for emergencies, and we wandered off into the woods for 40 minutes.







It took us so long to get up the trail and to pick which other trails to take.  It's kind of a maze of trails back there - really wide, wide, sandy, super duper thin and barely used, and a big wide trail covered in brand new baby grass.  Some of the trails had little markers that stated a trail pass was required.  I had never noticed that before.  I tried to stay off those trails but couldn't find a way to get to the bog without using one.  Oh well.

It took us a long time because Olive needed to photograph the trees.



Olive taking the photo below.





And because she thought the sandy path was really neat.  It was full of foot prints.



And then she found a hole which is at the bottom of the next photo and spent some time looking at it.









We found a trail marker and Olive decided it was time to turn and follow this trail.  That's what it said to do.





So we found ourselves on a teeny tiny trail with lots of fallen trees.







And Olive found more trees to photograph.  We really need to work on moving that finger.





I found a nice yellow flower.



So did Olive.





I had to encourage her to not put the camera right on top of the flower she was photographing.  So she decided to zoom in.



She also needs to work on waiting for the camera to take the photo.  It's not as quick as mine and she's ready to snap the photo and move on but she needs to pause.  I kept the weird quack sound on so she can hear when it's done but sometimes she's just ready to move on.



She found and decided to photograph some more flowers.





And then she asked me to stop for a photo.











Finally we made our way down to the bog.  Olive was excited to see that we were going to walk on a little bridge.



This bog is surrounded by water so floating bridges get you to the middle, where the moss and trees are.



Olive thought it was really neat and couldn't quite decide if the water was water or mud.



She saw a lot of flowers that she liked and a lot of bugs walking on top of the water.















We really need to work on the whole the camera doesn't have a view finder thing.



I'm glad she's showing an interest in moss.  That's important.



And then we headed back up a few trails to the parking lot.



And photographed a couple more things on the way.

:)