a day of hiking...

what started as bringing a bike in to get fixed turned into an almost 3 hour hike. last week, we walked dylan's bike over to the bike store to get a tune-up and once we dropped it off, dylan suggested we take the extra 5-10 minutes and walk over to the aviary. i had been there a year ago when i took photos for an event and it was so cool, and plus, he promised me that the aviary  had silkie chickens!

 how are they so beautiful?

incredible.

 a silkie! he was so adorable, though a little dirty!

 just a rooster...

cockadoodledoo-ing away.

the aviary is right by an entrance to a trail, so naturally, dylan convinced to go even further on our walk. it was about  35 blistering degrees, and not to mention, we both didn't have the proper shoes on as this was not planned. but, we did have a good time.

 going into the trail.

 natures natural candy corn?

 beautiful, except for the water.

 to live in a big city, but be a short walk from this? awesome.

 random chair that was already just sitting there.

doe, a deer, a female deer.

by far, the best part of the hike was seeing this deer so up close and personal! we saw her on the way in, but i couldn't get a good picture, then on our way out, we saw her again. i got pretty darn close and i was even closer than in this picture (just after this was taken, i moved in slowly and carefully), but then just as i was about to click the camera, she pranced off. dylan said sometimes there's families of about 10 that hang around together and it's very unlikely they would come after us. can't wait to get back there and see more of the cute little buggers. except for the butterflies...there were far too many of those flying around (read more about my extreme phobia here).