We tried to get the kids out of the house to go on a hike. They were grumpy about it. Our plan was to go up the fire tower at the ranger school in Wanakena. (“I hate fire towers!”) When we got there, though, the whole campus was closed to visitors. So we drove around to the other side of the river to look at a big tree Sarah had found recently. Jumiper refused to walk:

I brought her back to the car and Sarah kept going with Otis. Then Otis decided he didn’t want to hike without Dad and Juniper. So we got angrily back in the car.

We decided to give it one more shot and drove over to the boat launch at Cranberry Lake. There’s a short hike along the Cranberry Lake 50 that does a detour over to Lost Pond. As soon as the kids got on the trail, everything was fine.

The hike was better than expected! There was a huge cliff with big boulder caves at the bottom. Otis found a porcupine quill:

Glad we gave it one more go.