Keeping Kids Engaged With Nature: A Final Destination

I personally love to go for super long hikes sometimes all day long. I have climbed many of the Colorado 14ers, some 13ers, and lots of peaks in Rocky Mountain National Park. When I first started trying to get my kids out into nature I started with really short nature walks. I figured this was all they could handle and it was just nice to be outside. So we would go to a familiar trail head walk out as far as we could then when the whining started we'd turn around and go back to the car.

This accomplished the goal of getting the kids outside but never really got them engaged in the hike itself. I realized that my personal love of hiking is all about the destination. While I like short walks in the woods it is getting to a destination that really inspires me. It is far more exciting to climb to a summit of a mountain, hike to a waterfall, or arrive at a unique rock outcropping than to just walk into the woods and the return the same way.

I have found the children really respond to a hike to a destination much better than just a hike. You can use it as a motivator to keep going. When the kids start to complain it is easy to get them back on track if you can say, "We are almost there".

Some of our favorite family hikes include a short walk to a Keyhole in a series of rocks called the devils backbone, a small rock cabin and overlook, an old cabin at bobcat ridge, waterfalls, or even a hike around a lake. Starting out with the goal of reaching something exciting always leads to a more successful hike.