Spring is here. wonderful weather, birds, animals, the beginning of our hiking season

So I am already not doing very well with writing a post every week, but here I am again.

I think in my head I had determined that I would officially start my pledge on May 1st. We are now 9 days into the month. Here's what I've found thus far.

It is not hard for me to participate in the no collection of the plastic bags. Over the last few months I have tried VERY hard to remember to bring reusable bags with me anywhere I go. And have done very well with it and then to make it even easier my pal Regina sent me a chicobag (http://store.chicobag.com/). This is the most handy reusable bag around. It stuffs easily into it's own sack that is easy to keep in any purse, carry with me, basically there is no excuse not to have this with me always. The website of chicobag's says that the average American uses between 300 and 700 plastic bags a year!!! Thankfully I'm well on my way to not being a part of that trend.

I also ran a 5k recycle run (http://www.thegrandrounds.com/default.asp?PageID=1016) for the Minneapolis park and rec board the Sunday after earth day. It was a great run around Lake Harriet in Minneapolis. I paid my entry fee of $25 and a lot of this money is going to future earth day activities in Minneapolis which I can strongly support. It was my fastest 5k run thus far. And after the race my husband and I got to enjoy a show on the lake of loons, swimming diving, flapping their wings at one another. They were headed up north for the summer but made a pit stop on Lake Harriet that morning which we were thankful for. My coworker and I plan to sign up for the Urban Wildland half marathon in Richfield in August. The entry fee for this race goes to the Wood Lake Nature Center for their environmental education programs. It will be my first half marathon and training thus far has made me realize just how far 13 miles is, but that's a whole different story...

In the past week we've had beautiful weather so B, Q and I have decided to get out and check out our closer parks to enjoy the lovely weather. On Monday we went to Fort Snelling State Park and hiked Pike Island. It's a hike we've done any number of times and really enjoy and we are thankful that it's so close to home. This time was particularly enjoyable, as we got to see the island with high waters from both the Mississippi and Minnesota Rivers. In one of the little coves near the island we had the exciting experience of watching a beaver swim through the water, notice us and then slap it's tail at us before it dove below and disappeared. This was something we had never seen before. It made Q quite excited, but thankfully he was on his leash so he couldn't chase the beaver and find himself in more trouble than usual. On that day we also saw at least a dozen deer, blue herons, a green heron, ducks as well as a number of other birds. Wednesday we trekked out to Afton State Park and enjoyed a 2 hour hike through the woods, prairies, past the St. Croix river, which also had very high water.

I have pictures of both of these adventures, but they are still on the camera and I have yet to figure out how to get them from the camera onto this blog. Hopefully there will be pictures sometime this weekend from our adventures.