Paw Paw Park is located in Holland, MI and includes trails that wind along and cross over the Macatawa River.

We began at the West Entrance where the kids had fun on some playground equipment before we got to work. We gloved up, got out our trash bags and grabbers, and started hunting for litter!

The dog was even fairly helpful in pointing out the trash, as long as we could get to it before she decided to eat it.

We continued along the river which was very beautiful. The kids were pretty bold and went off the path whenever they spotted any litter to be picked up. We saw a duck flying along the river and under a bridge.

We crossed several bridges, and eventually made it to the park's disc golf course. On a lot of the hole's baskets there were glow sticks weaved into the chains. We left those alone but we found a ton of old, used glow sticks on the ground which the kids were very excited to find and throw away.

We made it to the East Entrance after having a popcorn snack break, and were able to throw away one of our whole bags of trash! We headed back to our cars but this time took a different loop of the trail.

The sunset was beautiful as we crossed another few bridges, and discovered some painted rocks others had left on the trail with encouraging messages. The kids talked about how they wanted to paint rocks of their own to leave at parks and on trails, to remind people not to litter and how to help the earth. We talked about how we could create this site, which would be a resource to others for ideas and encouragement to help "Rescue the World!"

Near the end of the hike we stopped to watch a herd of deer across the river from us. It was a beautiful moment - right before some of the kids started to show signs that they were "just done" with this adventure. In the end we had picked up two bags of trash and one bag of recyclables!