Independence Day Outing

This morning, we loaded up and drove to a nearby state park, Buttermilk Falls. Neither Dan or I had heard of this park until we moved here last year, although it's only about 45 minutes from a state park that we'd heard of all our lives and been to several times: Watkins Glen. Both parks are similar in that they follow a river gorge for about a mile or so, but Watkins Glen covers a larger area, is steeper and is more touristy. The main falls at the park we went to today, Buttermilk Falls, is right near the parking lot at the end of the loop:
We hiked up the Rim Trail (all the while listening to Seth say he didn't want to go hiking because he'd seen the playground on the way into the park and wanted to go there instead), and came back down the Gorge Trail on the other side of the river. Aiden was Mr. Independent, walking along by himself for most of the way and happily holding on to a small stick that he'd found, which he told us was his fishing pole.
Once we got to the place where we crossed over the river on a bridge, Seth started to warm up to the idea of hiking. We had a much better view of the river on our way down, and there were plenty of places where little hands got to reach out and get wet in the water that was dripping from the rocks, trees and moss that lined the trail. Due to all the rain we've had this week, there were also a lot of puddles. Despite Dan and I asking repeatedly for the boys not to jump in them while they were holding our hands and walking with us, that proved to be too great a temptation, and we all had really wet and muddy sandals by the time we finished our walk. The views along the trail were beautiful and we had a nice hike (with thankfully very little carrying of toddlers).
The river bed is roped off for swimming at the bottom of Buttermilk Falls, but as it was only around 70 degrees outside, we had no desire to get in. Instead, we took our picnic over to the playground area and ate a quick lunch.
For a small state park, it was a really fun playground. Most of the equipment there were things that none of us had ever seen before. There was plenty to climb on and spin on, and the boys had a blast!
Surprisingly, both Seth and Aiden stayed awake during our 40-minute ride home. We thought about taking the boys to see some fireworks tonight, but as thunder makes Seth cry every time he hears it, and Aiden woke up extremly crabby after his nap this afternoon, we decided we'd wait another year for that Fourth of July experience.

However, we did show them youtube videos of fireworks on the iPod... does that count for anything?