National Peanut Butter and Jelly Day - April 2nd, plus walking Veteran's Parkway and setting a new walking record!

It's National Peanut Butter and Jelly Day! The kids love PB&J and the adults are fans too. We've got a big hike coming up later today and we're going to need food. The kids are all set to make their dinner. 

The kids are self sufficient at this point! Just give them the ingredients and they can make food on their own. They are getting good at evenly spreading out the peanut butter. And you have to make sure you get both sides covered in peanut butter. 

Before you spread jelly in the middle. Ian wanted blackberry jelly for his sandwich. 

Alli did it all herself too. Grape jelly for her. 

And grape for me. 

Our favorite is strawberry jelly. We need to get more of that!

The kids have been talking about going back on that woodchip trail hike that we did before. Last time we did 8 miles and they are both looking to set a new record for a single day walk. I love walking on Veteran's Parkway because there's not that many road crossings, but this time the wood chips were especially bad today getting into our shoes. Let's get started!

Anything that can be climbed on should be climbed on. This statue is at the start of the trail and it something fun to crawl over. 

It appears that some school classroom and maybe some other people have decorated the trail for various holidays. Many of these are made with foam instead of paper, so they last a really long time. 

"There's always Flowers for those who want to see them."

More things to play on! 

At the transition between Hermosa Beach and Manhattan Beach is this beautiful sign. Theresa noted that the name of the street is Boundary. 

The kids are hungry and so am I! We've been hiking for a few miles so far, so this break is nice. We hopped off the main path and found a picnic table in Live Oak Park. 

There we could watch people play tennis as we ate our PB&J sandwiches. 

One thing I've been wanting to take the kids over to see is Sand Dune Park. This giant dune has a huge slope. It used to be that you could go up and down it whenever. Because of its popularity though, now you have to make a paid reservation to be able to go on it. There's a city worker at the gate who lets people in. But, I'm glad we got to stop by and see it. Now that the kids have seen it, I'm sure that'll be on the list of things they want to go visit.  

Taking that detour to Sand Dune Park caused us to go a little out of the way from the Greenbelt trail. We wound our way through neighborhood streets until we caught back up to it, and in doing so, logged an extra mile compared to if we'd just gone on the path like normal. 

We made it to the end! The old Fry's Electronics parking lot near the Manhattan Village mall. The kids are all smile and ready to head back. Even though we finished dinner not too long ago, they know that a snack break is coming soon too. 

The walk back always seems faster than the outbound walk. 

The promised snack break, consisting of PopTarts, cheese balls, and a pack of gummy fruit snacks they can keep in their pocket. 

We're back at the start of the trail and once again climbing on the statue. It's been 9 miles, which is our longest walk ever, but the kids wanted to really solidify this as the longest walk. Alli insisted that we go 10 miles tonight. 

We took a right turn and walked to the Strand in Hermosa Beach. It's not all that busy at 8pm on a Friday apparently. 

We knew about how far back it would be to the car, so with Theresa keeping an eye on her watch and the distance tracker, we knew when we could turn around and still hit 10 miles. 

And once we got back to the car, sure enough! 10.01 miles! 

Wow! That was awesome kids! Our longest walk yet! 

Alli (when we got back to the car) - That just happened. 

Overall, including all the dinner/snack/play breaks that 10 miles took us 4 hours and 10 minutes. And was there any complaining? Not one bit! As we got back to the car, Ian asked it we could do it again next week! 

Here's a few video clips, including Alli showing off her "super speed" even after we crossed mile 9.5.