Autumn and spring have always battled for the title of my favorite season. This year, I think autumn has finally taken the prize as we visited the Adirondack State Park (Mirror Lake and Lake Placid, NY) for the first time to enjoy the autumn colours. Wow, I’ve never seen so many beautiful shades of autumn leaves.

Autumn in Mirror Lake, Adirondack Park, New York, USA

I’m not much of a shopper, so we skipped ‘main street’ for the most part, opting instead for row boating on the lake and a nice nature walk.

We’ve been doing nature walks with the kids since before they could walk. I find that when you start things like this early in their lives and make them family habits, you get fewer ‘we’re bored’ complaints.

Looking across Lake Placid from the nature trail.

Once the kids began school, autumn nature walks became a time when they opened up a bit about what they were feeling about the new year. Over the years, we discovered a lot about their struggles, triumphs, hopes and fears by just staying quiet while exploring. Luckily (?), I’m in the worst shape in our family and usually panting about half way through our adventures which makes ‘just listening’ easier for me than it usually is, hehe.

Can you see the blue dots on the trees marking the trail?

Start your own autumn leaf book with templates from kidzone.ws

This particular trail was pretty neat because while it was marked with blue dots on the trees you could keep that a grown up secret so the kids feel like they’re following a cool animal trail. There was lots of climbing over roots, shuffling through piles of leaves and chasing round trees (and that was just what dad was up to, hehe). There were also lots of autumn leaves in different colours and from different types of trees to collect for my autumn leaf book. (Yes, I still like to add to mine even though the girls have grown out of it).

Visit DLTK’s Autumn Activites for fall crafts, coloring pages and worksheets.

All photos in this blog post are copyright Darren Guenther.