Day at the Park: West Valley and Stroud Preserve

Bridget and I took the dogs out for the day on Saturday.  We wanted to take them for a walk for some exercise, and also for a quick swim in the Brandywine creek, since it was such a nice day out!

First we started at the West Valley Nature Area, which is in Downingtown just off of Route 322.  We got tired pretty quickly because there were alot of steep hills (Halley and Ben just laid down and quit walking after a while!)… and we also couldn’t get to the creek without tresspassing on private property.

   

We then followed North Creek road off of 322, looking for a good spot to park with access to the Brandywine.  We found a nice little park, but unfortunately no pets were allowed! 

After crossing 162, we found the Stroud Preserve, which was wonderful since it is 574 acres of open nature preserve with walking trails, ponds, and access to the Brandywine… it was also very dog freindly too which was great!

And both Halley and Ben were able to cool off and go for a swim.  We found out that Ben loves to swim, he kept swimming around and around even after we got Halley out and wouldn’t come out of the water until we started to pretend that we were leaving!

At the end of the day I had tripped over some rocks by the creek’s edge, and fell down with my camera!  Yes, my honey asked if I wanted her to hold the camera for me, since she tripped over the same rock, but I stupidly said “no thanks”.  I’m glad the camera was 100% ok, except for a small scuff mark on the outer lens barrel, but you can see from this picture my honey took to “test out the camera” that I was a bit upset at first!

You can see all of the pictures from the day here.