My husband’s aunt and uncle were in town from Colorado in mid November. They love the outdoors (especially skiing and birding) so I figured it was worth traveling a little farther outside Seattle.

We drove to Squak Mountain State Park (Discovery Pass Required) for Pretzel Tree Trail.

The trail is about a half mile loop with signs along the way.

Each sign progresses the story of a mouse looking for the pretzel tree and teaches about nature.

Kaya got excited about finding and looking at each sign (which were frequent enough to keep her interested) and of course at everything else as well.

We also heard a tree frog!

True confession: we never did find the pretzel tree. We found the sign saying it was there, with a picture of what it should look like, but looked all around and couldn’t find it. We laughed and were glad that’s not actually why we drove the 45 minutes out here, then kept walking along, looking at everything else.