Hiking Hurricane Ridge

Last Sunday, we ventured up to Hurricane Ridge in the Olympic National Park.
"I'm going on a hike!" he said proudly from his comfy backpack carrier as Drew and I sweated up an in incline in the sun and heat.
While we will probably choose a few more level hikes to take him on so that Silas can walk without fear that he will pull away from us and fall off a cliff, we couldn't resist taking him up to the mountains. I love it up there. We hiked in the Olympic Mountains almost every weekend in the summer back before Silas was born, and we want to get back into a hiking routine. While one is more limited with a toddler, clearly, it's not impossible!

I took a picture of the three of us in this same location two years ago, and it can be found as a picture in this post. I have to say, we look way more hot and tired in this current shot, but I think, just as happy :)
The young buck, who was unaffected by the constant crowd of people gathering around him near the visitor center did not fail to disappoint.
But what Silas undoubtedly was most interested in that day can be heard in the video below. "I don't know what that noise is," he proclaims. On the way home when we asked him what he liked about the hike, he said "the animals." But it wasn't the deer he talked about, it was the crickets. Go figure!