Abby got two long nights of sleep Friday and Saturday, so we knew we needed to somehow exhaust her on Sunday if we expected her to go to sleep before midnight. We figured a 4.5-mile hike would be a good start. We headed up the Seven Hollows area at Petit Jean State Park, which offers the bonus of a chance to be crushed by falling trees. Luckily for us winds were forecast to be in the 15-25 mph range.
The hollows are really small shallow canyons formed by the erosion of the flat-topped Petit Jean Mountain. A mile or so down the trail we stopped for lunch and a family photo.
We stopped off to marvel at the natural bridge. It was nice to see the graffiti had been cleaned off the rock formation since my last visit a few years ago.
A spur trail leads up one of the hollows to an area dubbed the Grotto, which features a waterfall at the head of the canyon. The waterfall was just a trickle. A lot of nice fall color remained and this is the view looking up from the floor of the Grotto. It was at about this point in the hike when Abby and I stopped to observe two strangely acting grasshoppers that shortly began mating. Abby opined that she thought they were fighting and I unthinkingly remarked that I thought they were making new grasshoppers. Well that launched a conversation that Gina and I weren’t prepared to have just yet. So we just made some vague comments and fended off the questions until Abby gave up on it about an hour later.
