SunshineMama

Weekend Jaunt....

Today, we took a little bit of a jaunt around the corner and down the road from where we live. I love living here. Around every corner is nature's playground.

Not far from where we live is a great train trestle....it's still in use and below it is a fantastic cascading waterfall. It's not too fast, not too cold and not too deep. It's a perfect spot to take the kids on a hot summer day.

I've actually been over the road bridge (which you can't see in this picture, but it's behind the trees behind the trestle) many times for walks and driving to the lake, but I've never been down to the creek. David likes to take the kids down here on a regular basis since it's close by and easy to get to. He had promised the kids that he would take them down there today. I hadn't planned on going down, but my daughter was quite insistent. I couldn't say no, so I gave myself a little bit of a mental boost and packed my water shoes, camera and sketch book and headed out with the family.

I never took the sketchbook out because I had such a great time traipsing through the water to get to the falls (we had to take a path down the hill and through the woods to be able to get to the creek, then head up the creek to the falls) and sitting down and watching my husband and kids play in the water.

Usually, Zach is all about the bugs. Lately, when he's at the water, it's all about the fish. His bug nets double as fish nets now. It's amazing how skilled he is at not only catching bugs with one fell swoop of his net, but also fish! He's amazing!

I love this picture of him in his mud boots. He usually wears sandals when he's outside, but his sandals finally gave up the ghost and took their resting place in the dumpster. They lasted him through last year and this year and, after being held together by strong medical tape to get even more life out of them, they finally bit the dust. I had held off buying him a new pair this year because they seemed to be doing alright. I underestimated this little guy. He wore them hard and by the time they fell apart for good, the stores around here were getting rid of their sandals on clearance to make room for fall and winter footwear. And doesn't it just figure? The only sandals that were left were too small for him. Girly ended up with a pair instead, but I don't think those will make it to next year for her. Good thing they were only $4 for the pair!

Anyway.........the funniest thing about these mud boots is that Zach will go in the water WAY past the top of the boots. One of the reasons he wore the boots was because they have good traction on the bottom and the creek can be a little slippery in places, especially on submerged rocks. Whenever Zach got out of the water, you could hear the water sloshing around in his boots. He walked back up the trail and down the road, all the way back to our house with his boots full of water and didn't think anything of it. I had thought about suggesting to him to empty them out, but it was too cute, so I didn't say a thing.

The first picture in this post is looking up at the trestle from the bottom of the waterfall.

This picture to the left here is looking down the creek from the bottom of the waterfall. It was such a beautiful day today......and the way the light fell on the trees and the creek was a bit magical.  I kept expecting to see fairies flitting about in the woods and above the creek.

We DID see a muskrat hop out of the creek and run up the falls, though. Not quite the same as seeing a fairy, but the kids had never seen one outside of a page in a book, so that was pretty cool for them.

This creek is actually submerged in the spring time by the melting snows. Its also grows twice the size in width and goes far beyond, to the right, from what yo u see in the picture. We haven't had a lot of rain lately, so the water level is really low right now. There's still a bit of a pool at the bottom of the falls, though, which is perfect for netting fish (Davy and Zach caught quite a few and they were actually pretty big....I was thinking they'd be minnow size, but they were about 3 or 4 inches long each!). Davy even stood in the pool really still for a while and the fish were nibbling on his toes. They didn't seem to be afraid of anyone. Except after they were caught, examined and then put back in the water.....they wanted to get away pretty quick.

The falls are a great place to sit and cool off. They're also a great place for a little Girly to splash her Dad. God forbid if you splash her back....but Davy is really great about it and humors her. I love to sit off to the side and hear her giggle as she gets him all wet. And I love to listen to him humor her and put up a silly, fake fuss when she splashes him. It's definitely some of the best theatrics ever!

I didn't realize what I was missing out on when they went on these little jaunts. I'll definitely have to go again sometime soon. Maybe I'll even take the kids myself this week during the day. Zach is done with his 6 weeks of summer school as of this past Friday. They'll be wanting something to do and this week is supposed to be a warm one. It'll be a good place to take a picnic lunch and cool off.

And now it's outside for me......I'm going out in the backyard to see if I can see any of the Perseid meteors. This is supposed to be the best night for them, but I fear the sky is starting to cloud up a bit. I saw some heat lightning earlier and the weather channel is calling for isolated thunder storms here tonight, so there might not be much to see. Here's to hoping.

Oh, I've recently updated Zach's list of "places he's traveled" through the Postcard project that's been going on since the end of November. (Look at the sidebar, to the right of this post) Click here to see that original post ----> Help Zach see the world!

Thank you to everyone that have sent postcards, little gifts (those were totally unexpected by so appreciated!) and well wishes to him! It's been a great project and he has 7 photo albums full of postcards from all over the US and the world! We enjoy every one of them that comes in!
Have a wonderful week everyone!
-Erika

We took off for the weekend......

One of the best things about living in New England is that a great camping trip is never far away.

This past weekend, we took off across Lake Champlain and into the Adirondack Mountains of New York. We found a really great campground along the Ausable River.

Now, if you know us well enough, you know that we're not big fans of camping in RV parks or over-run campgrounds. When we want to get away, we want to get away from EVERYTHING.

Last month, we went to a fantastic state park in New York and LOVED the campsite we stayed in. We had to pack up a canoe with all of our stuff, then paddle a mile and a half across the pond to our campsite. There was NO ONE ELSE around. Just the way we wanted it.

This past weekend, we wanted to go to the same state park and campsite, but it was already booked. I searched online for another campground in the nearby vicinity and found one that had a "wilderness camping area." It look intriguing so we booked a couple nights there.

It wasn't AS "wilderness" as we would have liked, but it's definitely one of the better campgrounds we've stayed at. We had a little bit more room to ourselves in the "wilderness area" and the river was right below our camp site. There was a bit of a steep bank to climb down, but it was worth it. The kids got to go swimming, Zach got to catch fish and frogs in his net, Girly got to go exploring, I got to sit on the river bank and read my magazines (I even went for a dip in the river the first night because it was SO hot and humid out) and Davy took his kayak out for a long paddle. Girly really enjoyed swimming across the river with her life jacket on.....almost a month ago, she found out that we weren't kidding when we told her that her life jacket would help her float. Now she has no qualms about swimming in deep water if she has her life jacket on.

Zach is always happy to just be outside and catch whatever moves. The river has lots of fish in it, and the small ones were gathered near the shore. Perfect for Zach. He caught SO many of them! He was putting them in water bottles, keeping them for a while to watch them and then releasing them back into the river.

We stayed for 2 nights, roasted marshmallows over the fire, let the kids play in the pool (here they had this BIG river to play in but they wanted to try the pool out), took part in a campground-wide hayride and then let the kids partake in a treasure hunt.

I realized how much we've become like my parents.....driving around and taking in the scenery, while the kids were in the back asking when we were going to go back to the campground. How well I remember doing that as a kid. Those weekend drives seemed to take SO long. I wanted to be out of the car and playing outside. The kids handled it well, though.

My daughter is quite the ham and is very rarely ladylike or clean when she eats. I made a batch of banana chocolate chip muffins before we left for our camping trip (because I didn't want to waste the already over-ripe bananas). I figured they would be a good snack to take along and my kids LOVE them. It is SO hard to keep this child clean, but how can you be mad an adorable face like this?

On our way home yesterday, we took a side trip to something we've heard about but have never seen: Ausable Chasm.

What a beautiful sight! We weren't able to go onto the vast network of trails and explore too much, but just going over the bridge and peering down into the chasm and looking at Rainbow Falls was an amazing sight! The trails take you into the chasm for about 4 miles of hiking. We didn't plan on the cost (which is a little high, in my opinion...it would have cost us $48 to get in as a family) and we didn't plan on the time to take a 4 mile hike, but eventually, I would like to go back, simply because I hear that it's absolutely gorgeous and you don't quite get the full effect unless you've seen it all!

Here is a shot of Rainbow Falls, which can be seen when standing on the Route 9 bridge over the river. The bridge itself is also very pretty to look at.

I hope you're all enjoying your summer just as much as we are.

-Erika