Sitka Cross Trail

Connor has been wanting to go for a hike the last few days and I have been wanting to hike the length of the Cross Trail because I have not been along the whole trail since it was completed a few years ago, so I decided to see how Connor did hiking the trail. It was fairly late in the afternoon by the time Connor was up from his nap, so we had Melissa drop us off on the gravel to save some time over starting at Indian River Trailhead.

Right as we reached the trail, a couple of good sized dogs and their owner came along. One of the dogs was very friendly and came right up to check us out. Connor did pretty well, but when the dog stuck its nose in his face, he thought that it was time or me to pick him up. He laughed about it afterward, saying that the dog had tried to kiss him.

Connor started asking me to pick him up about a half mile into the hike, but I told him that he is getting too big for me to carry very far, so if he wanted to go on hikes with me, he would have to walk most of the way. That seemed to convince him that maybe he would not mind walking. He saw many things that would have been interesting to spend more time looking at including ice (hail), bubbles in the water, sticks, and rocks. Unfortunately we could not spend very long looking around because dark was coming quickly, especially in the woods.

By the time we had been going for a little over a mile, he was starting to ask to get picked up more frequently. I told him that his mom was going to pick us both up at the end of the trail and we needed to keep walking. He did very well, even though he started to ask to get picked up more often as we got towards the end. In the end, he made the whole 2+ mile hike walking the whole way except for a few steps where I carried him when dogs were going by.

It took us 70 minutes to get from the quarry road to the water tank (2.0 miles) at a pace Connor could keep up with.