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Spring Thing: Ridley Creek State Park Trail

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As it turns out, I really like hiking.

A ruined old house on Ridley Creek State Park Trail; there were also some lovely private residences, some of a similar vintage.

This is one of those things that’s not surprising at all now that I pause to think about it. I have infinite stamina for walking and I enjoy nature the most when I’m passing through it at a pretty steady clip rather than enjoying it from a stationary position.

While E enjoys nature perhaps more than I do, she does not possess my unlimited stamina for walking. Thus, after a terrifically fun and challenging hike with the assembled Drexel crew last Memorial Day, I got it fixed in my head that I had to convince EV6 to enjoy hiking. I had positive reports from other parents that this was the sort of thing you could use to occupy a child’s time and attention at low cost. It seemed like a good tactic.

A not-quite-three-year-old is a bit too small for a hike of any substance, but that didn’t stop from from hyping EV6 up about hiking from the moment I returned from that trip last year. Any time anyone I vaguely knew uploaded a hiking picture I made sure EV6 saw it. We talked about how it would be challenging, and how it’s for bigger kids. We got a membership to Longwood Gardens to start getting used to traipsing around for hours outdoors.

Everything was proceeding as planned. I was about to have a hike-loving child at home with me for this Spring!

And then we did our little Darby Creek excursion the other day and I faced the cold, harsh light of reality: it’s unreasonable to expect such little legs to walk more than two miles in a day. EV6 is only a bit over half my height, so my two miles probably feels more like four miles to her! Whether it counts as two or four, that’s only about 60 to 90 minutes of hiking, all told. Not super satisfying, especially if it involved a long drive to get there.

Does that mean I resigned myself to a series of brief two mile hikes all Spring? NO MA’AM. I am nothing if not tenacious. [Read more…] about Spring Thing: Ridley Creek State Park Trail

Spring Thing: Darby Creek Trail

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When we awoke this morning and glimpsed an ultra-beautiful day outside, EV6 and I determined we could not simply roll on with our typical Tuesday morning errands routine.

EV6 has been agitating for a return trip to Morris Arboretum’s Tree Adventure, but I find their admission to be a bit steep for what’s on the grounds – especially when we’re members of the massive Longwood Gardens! Still, I liked her plan of getting outside and being surrounded by trees.

Darby CreekThen, I remembered reading a Philly.com article about the newly-opened Chester Creek trail, a newly rehabbed stretch of old train tracks that’s not far from here. The article unhelpfully didn’t provide a website or an address for the trail, but it linked to The Circuit Trails, a very pretty and mostly useless website that also lists trails without directions or maps, but links to ChesterCreekTrail.org, a site about the trail without directions or a map.

Wow, this internet thing is pretty hard to do!

Luckily, Circuit Trails linked to the actually useful TrailLink, which revealed the mysterious and previously quite secret location of the the Chester Creek Trail! It was about a half hour away, and I didn’t relish the idea of an hour of car time to take EV6 on her first hike, which might spectacularly fail. Luckily, TrailLink makes it easy to search for other trails in your area, and we found a pair less than half that far from our house!

(By the way, the addresses of the two ends of the Chester Creek Trail are North – 439-446 Lenni Rd, Media, PA 19063 and South – 249 Knowlton Rd, Media, PA 19063).

The trail we chose was The Darby Creek Trail, a single mile of completely paved trail running north alongside 476 from where it crosses Route 1. Not only was it short, paved, and nearby, it included another feature that won EV6 over: a playground!

EV6 was so excited by the prospect of a hike plus playground that I think it was the fastest we’ve ever left the house in the morning!

As for the trail, I’d call it more of a pleasant jogging path than a hike, but it’s ideal for practicing with little legs because of the brief length and the even, asphalt-covered ground. That also makes it ideal for kids to practice riding their bikes, especially since there are no interruptions to the trail or sharp curves!

There were a few attractive stopping points at the creekside where families were fishing or dipping their toes. The creek was surprisingly unspoiled for lying just a few yards from the side of a highway (it’s shielded by a high retaining wall), and the white noise of the rushing cars actually added to the feeling of seclusion.

EV6 decided that she ought to use the mile as interval training. After all of her sprinting, by the end of it she was pretty wiped out and begging for her snack of apple sauce. I don’t think it had quite sunk in that we needed to reverse course and re-walk the entire mile to get back to the car! She wouldn’t have made it back if not for the promise of some playground time at the end.

While the walk itself wasn’t so thrilling, its proximity to a ton of our Route 1 errand locations makes it likely we’ll use this for our morning exercise on cool, sunny days like this one in the next few months. Plus, we’ll be back later this week to enjoy a bike ride!

Darby Creek Trail’s address is literally “Darby Creek Trail,” Havertown, PA 19083, but you could also dial in the playground, Merry Place, 600 Glendale Road, 19083.

Spring Thing: The American Helicopter Museum

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When I first began my stay-at-home time with Little Miss last year, Lindsay recommended that we check out the local library’s selection of museum passes, to which I replied, “huh and the what now?”

As it turns out, many library systems have passes to local attractions like museums, aquariums, and zoos that you can request and check out just like a book! After Lindsay carefully explained it to me as if I did not speak English, I checked out our library catalog.

Lo and behold, they had tons of passes cataloged – and, not just obvious stuff like the zoo or the Franklin Institute, but smaller, local museums too – places that probably benefit from the foot traffic generated from turning up in the library search!

One such place that struck my fancy was “The American Helicopter Museum.” I might not be a guy who digs a lot of heavy machinery and I’m the farthest thing you could meet from a mechanical engineer, but I am certainly not going to turn down the chance to see a few dozen helicopters up close!

I filed the museum away in my head for future use on a rainy day. Luckily, most of our Adventure Days in the past year haven’t been rainy – and, when they were, we hit one of the city museums early before they could be packed with school field trips. I never had to pull the Helicopter museum out of my bag of tricks.

Then, a few weeks ago, EV6 and I were at an impasse in our weekly Adventure planning. We had fallen into a bit of an Adventure rut of hitting the same places repeatedly (please, no more Please Touch Museum, I beg you), and neither of us were too excited for a repeat. Struck by sudden inspiration, I asked her, “Do you like helicopters?” (Noise aside, what kid doesn’t?) When she nodded in assent, I showed her the photos on the museum’s website. She was instantly sold.

As it happens, yesterday was not a rainy day at all. It was a stunning bombshell of gorgeous Spring t-shirt weather when we pulled up to the museum. It’s located at 1220 American Boulevard, West Chester, PA 19380 in an otherwise unassuming office park, but it’s easy to spot due to multiple helicopters parked on its lawn. [Read more…] about Spring Thing: The American Helicopter Museum