This weekend we found an awesome, kid friendly and interesting-to-adults trail in Los Trancos Open Preserve: the San Andreas Fault Trail. The trail was wide enough for a jog stroller but The Monkey walked the whole way, and The Puppy Dog most of the way.
The Monkey running down the trail map in hand
Puppy Dog liked it too
There was lots for the kids to look at — interesting trees and flowers, little rabbits and a family of deer. There’s also a guided walk with points of geographical interest. The Monkey loved running ahead and finding the numbered posts that marked each landmark and then finding them on the map. It was really neat to see him understand how maps work and how the things represented there relate to the real world. His parents enjoyed the information on the San Andreas fault–we learnt lots about pressure ridges and sag ponds, and how fault features looked like great building spots to early settlers until they realised what had made them.
An exercise in map reading
It was also a nice trail to use to talk to The Monkey about earthquakes and to help him make sense of the earth quake drills that he’s been having at school in previous weeks. Broken fences and mis-shaped trees made great visuals to help him understand what an earthquake is.
A fence split asunder by a quake
Looking down the fault--deadly but beautiful
The Outdoors Parent 
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