Saturday June 6, 2015
The weather has finally begun to feel like summer so we
made the most of it and drove 30 minutes away to a national park for a family
hike: dad, mom, baby girl and doggy. The
Nationaal Park de Loonse en Drunense Duinen is nicknamed the Brabant Sahara. It
has wandalen (walking), horseback riding and mountain biking trails. We went to
the Bosch en Duin entrance near Udenhout because it was on the south edge of
the park, closest to Eindhoven and Tilburg and because it had a
hondenlosloopgebied (dog off leash area). The park is located in between the
cities of Tilburg and Den Bosch. Jackie read about a 4km Bosch en Duinroute
with green post markers to follow. According to google maps satellite views, the
trail would go through the sand dunes area and the forest giving us a good
glimpse of the different areas of this park. The great thing about this
relatively new Dutch national park, is there are no entrance fees!
We parked in a big lot by the Landgoed Bosch en Duin
restaurant.
Daddy and Brooklyn on the hike in the Nationaal Park de
Loonse en Drunense Duinen near de bos (forest) edge
Daddy and Brooklyn on the hike in Nationaal Park de
Loonse en Drunense Duinen near the sand dunes
Sand over 100km (60+ miles) from the sea
Happy pup in the off leash area
Happy pup running in the ‘sahara’
Happy hikers on the sunny 70 degree day
This water wasn’t a mirage afterall ;)
Now that is one happy running pup!
Happy girl likes to stick her tongue out
Hiking through de bos (the forest)
We followed the green hiking posts along. There were
numbers on them at intersections. We kept going from 31 down to 24. We decided
to keep following down toward lower numbers figuring the walking trail would
loop around like the map Jackie saw online. We ended up walking through some
private-looking farms.
Cows lying in the pasture
Cows and their calves lying in the pasture
Brooklyn finally fell asleep in the backpack on the hike.
We ended up needing to pull out the GPS on our phones to
make sure we were heading back on a path toward our car. We had to backtrack on
horse only trails. It was not fun walking around fresh horse poop that were
covered in flies. It was so disgusting. We finally ended up hiking/walking
closer to 8km, double our intent. It was probably a good thing we started as
early in the day as we did. They were a lot more cars and people at the
entrance when we made it back there.
We had thought it would be a good idea to go to La Trappe
Bierbrouwerij De Koningshoeven for lunch since we passed near it on the way
home. We forgot that Chance would be with us and it is now too warm out to
leave her in the car for that long.
We instead took advantage of the Bosch en Duin restaurant
that had dog friendly tables outside. Chance behaved fairly well. She’d freak a
bit and go after other dogs when they came near but eventually calmed down and
laid down while the 3 of us ate lunch.
We have been trying to give Brooklyn more and more types
of food, especially normal people food instead of pureed foods. She had some
eggs, tomato, cheese and mushrooms off of Jackie’s uitmijter (an open-faced
fried egg sandwich) and Joe’s sandwich.
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