2014 Park Quest #1: South Mountain State Park

We used the opportunity of our 3 day weekend to start Park Quest. The boys didn't have any baseball games due to the Holiday weekend so we had some free time. 

We decided to start our questing adventure at South Mountain State Park/ Washington Monument Park. We've visited this park in the past but, we learned some pretty cool new info this time around.  (I don't want to give away all the details in case our fellow Park Quester's are reading.) We took a short walk up from the museum to the monument. The boys enjoyed walking up the monument and looking out over the overlook. They then learned how soldiers would communicate to each other from far distances. You know... because they didn't have phones back then.  Big C then declared the cellphone the best invention ever. Lol.

After our quest. We drove over to South Mountain Creamery. We love their ice cream! We also love the fact they let you feed their baby cows daily.  We however, did not go their at the time of their feedings so missed out on that. We joined a new program to us called The Ice Cream Trail. It's a lot like Park Quest. They have 8 different creameries in the area you can visit to and get your paper stamped. Once you have visited all the creameries and gotten your stamps. You send in your paperwork and get entered in a drawing to win gift cards to your favorite creamery. Pretty cool idea and, what better way to finish a quest with non other than ice cream!! :)

Park Quest #1: South Mountain/Weverton Cliffs

We finally had time to go out on our 1st Park Quest of this Summer.  We chose the South Mountain quest that listed in the description, would be a 2 mile hike to the Weverton Cliffs. We were going with another family who also had a smaller child Carson's age. We were hesitant about making the full 2 mile hike up to the cliffs because we were told it was a hard hike. In the Park Quest book it describes it as a not for the faint and a 4 "Hat" difficulty. We decided we would hike to as far as we could and come back down.

We were pleasantly surprised by the young ones. They never once complained they were tired or wanted to quit. The older boys were super stars leading the way and even leaving the parents in the dust. The 2 mile hike taught us about the Appalachian trail, thru-hikers, about erosion and, switch- backs. The Cliffs overlooked the Potomac River, CSX Railroad, West Virgina, Virginia and, Maryland. It was such a beautiful view. 

We ended our quest with a trip to South Mountain Creamery which has some of the best ice cream! The boys both opted for mint chocolate chip while I got caramel sundae!

What a great 1st Quest! We can't wait for the next one!