Did You Ever Take a Walk through the Forest . . .

More of Heather's trip in the next post.  But first a Happy New Year to all.

La la la la . . . "Did you ever take a walk through the forest . . . stop and dream awhile among the trees?  You can look up through the leaves right straight to heaven.  You can almost hear the voice of God in each and every breeze.  You've got to stop and smell the roses.  You've got to count your many blessings every day . . . "

I love that song from "way back when" (Mac Davis: Stop and Smell the Roses) and it came to mind this morning as we went to the Karura Forest with our South African neighbors, Mariska and Jako and their two teenage sons, Gerco and Dion.  Rather than the smell of pine that we are used to in our mountain forests in Alberta, we enjoyed the heady aroma of the eucalyptus trees.  Eucalyptus trees are native to Australia and yet here they are in Kenya.  Karura Forest is actually within Nairobi city limits.  It took us about an hour to drive there.  Reminded me of the many parks our daughter Heather has discovered within Chicago.  So nice for city people to have places like this.

Happy New Year Everyone!

Starting our hike in the Karura Forest with Jako, Mariska, Gerco and Dion.  The red soil and the green foliage was beautiful.

Here's where I started singing "Did you ever take a walk through the forest?  Stop and dream awhile among the trees."

This Manikara treee has really interesting wing-shaped buttresses seeming to hold it up.  Reminded me of trees we saw in South America.  This tree is right beside a large cave (that I didn't take a picture of).  Back in the 1950's, Mau Mau Freedom Fighters hid out in these caves as they fought against the British.

Lovely little stream with very brown water

Elder & Sister Torrie!

Jako and Mariska are "geo-cachers!"  This was I think their 50th that they've found here in the Karura Forest.  It was hidden under a bridge.  You just open it up and write your name and date and put it back.  Then on your phone on the app, you write the date you found it.  Interesting!

Mariska wrote their names and also ours!  That's a first for us.  I googled when I got home and found that there's a geocache hidden outside the Grassy Lake Prairieview Cemetery.  Interesting!  Good thing it's outside of the cemetery because we always have an annual clean-up and I'm sure we would have cleaned it up!

I love these trees with their fan-shaped bottoms -- buttresses seeming to hold them up.

Nice to see a son hug his mother!  I always appreciated the hugs our sons gave me through the years and still give me.

This waterfall reminded us of Cameron Falls in Waterton Lakes National Park in Alberta, only on a much smaller scale.

Another geocache found!  They also placed a "travel bug."  They had picked it up in South Africa and carried it up here to Kenya.  For more information about travel bugs see https://www.geocaching.com/track/travelbugfaq.aspx.  Sounds like an interesting hobby to me.  In the last 20 years of our traveling we could have placed lots of travel bugs in many locations since we've been to almost 40 countries.

Last look at this lovely brown stream cascading over rocks on its way downhill.