This morning I took my 5-year-old granddaughter, Lily, on her first real hike. Our destination was the Strawberry Branch of the Sugar Pine Railway Trail. We arrived at the Fraser Flat trailhead, the location I usually start from, at about 11:00 AM. What I hadn't thought about was the fact that this was a summer weekend, and unfortunately there was absolutely no place to park. People’s vehicles were even taking up the pull outs with “No Parking” signs posted. Not wanting to disappoint Lily, we drove over to the Old Strawberry Road end of the trail to check out conditions there. Thankfully, there was only one other car using the trailhead. After getting Lily out of her car seat, smearing her with sunscreen, and consolidating all her treasures with some drinks and snacks in a single backpack, we were off down the trail. I didn’t know what to expect in terms of how far Lily would be able to walk, but even if only a short distance my goal was to keep it fun so that she would want to hike again. She stayed ahead of me for most of the way in, stopping only to pick up and look at giant pinecones, climb onto a few boulders, and satisfy Papa’s desire to snap as many pictures as Lily would tolerate. The hike was going great, and I was shocked when my tracking app announced that we had traveled one mile. I asked Lily if she wanted to keep going, noting that she needs to remember that we still must hike back, and she said “yes.” After almost another half mile it was time to stop for a drink and a snack. At that point Lily indicated that she was starting to get bored and was thinking more about our planned lunch at BE WOK back in Sonora (Lily’s favorite restaurant). So, after we finished with our beef sticks and water, we headed back from the direction we came. Lily noted along the way that she was disappointed that we could not get down to the river because the side trails were too steep. I kept my eye out along the way, and ended up spotting a trail, overgrown at the beginning, that showed some promise. After asking is she wanted to go down to the water (stupid question to a kid of course), she started down the trail without saying anything. At the bottom we found a small access point, next to a pool with slow, relatively shallow water. She wanted to go in, and after pointing out that it would be colder than the swimming pools, she’s used to swimming in, I told her to go ahead. The cold-shocked look on her face once in the river was priceless, and I wish I had had my phone ready to capture the moment. Lily stayed in, chasing water striders and picking up rocks, for maybe 20 minutes that including one slip and fall in which she landed on her butt (thankfully there were no tears). Once done, we hiked back up to the main trail and made our way back to the Bronco — I lost count of how many times she asked if we were there yet. The wonderful day was topped off with Lily saying, without being prompted one bit, “thank you — this was so much fun."