Mount Diablo State Park

Over the weekend the girls told me they wanted to go hiking. Hmmm, okay. I decided it would be fun to take them up to the summit of Mt. Diablo. We always are talking about it as we drive into Walnut Creek and I was able to find a relatively short trail around the summit that I thought they could handle.

After a long morning of swim team photos we headed out. I underestimated the amount of time it would actually take us to drive to the summit. When we reached the guard booth and paid our entrance fee ($10) I was informed it was another 30 minutes to the summit. I kept that information under close guard and read all of the signs on the way up to the kids.

Once we finally reached the summit I was actually amazed at how excited the kids were, they just kept saying "this is so awesome!". I'm not sure if I would have thought it was that cool at their age. We explored the observation deck and the visitor center. The center is relatively small but the kids loved all of the activities  and the information movie that was being played.

At the summit

Eventually I convinced them to head down to the Mary Bowerman Trail, which circles the mountain just below the summit. It's .7 miles and I had read that the first part of the trail is wheelchair accessible, so I figured that meant it would be kid friendly. Of course, that would have worked out great, if we had started at the start and not the end.

At the trail head or trail end as we discovered. 

It was all going great until the trail narrowed and the steep cliff to the right started to make me nervous since Miss. Ky has a skill of tripping over her own feet. When the bugs and various creatures started increasing in numbers and Syd started saying she was scared, I decided it was time to turn-around.

When we got back to the car, I found the start of the trail on the other side of the street, but by that point they were over the whole "hiking" thing. I told them they tried it and that was great, and if they didn't enjoy it that was okay as well. They decided they wanted to head up the visitors center one more time.

The actual summit is inside the visitor's center, they were
so excited to be standing on the top of the summit