I love being a spontaneous person. So, when Nick called home from work at 4:45 and said, "Why don't you throw the kids in the car and we'll go down by the creek, swim and have a picnic supper?", I said "Sure!"
After driving down a long dirt road into some State Game Lands, we arrived at one of our favorite swimming spots.
The water was a bit low due to lack of rain, but still plentiful.
Beauty all around us.
Mix in a little silliness..because that's what our family is all about.
Little critters joining our swim.
This area was sandy just like a beach!
Rocks found near water are my favorite. So smooth...so colorful...so unique.
After swimming and exploring for quite a while, Nick thought it would be fun to see where the dirt road goes, as we had only ever been this far. We hopped in the car and drove, and drove and drove.
That road seemed like it would never end. We finally saw a sign pointing down a side road for a pond that was familiar to us. Did we turn down it...nope. We wanted to see where this other road went.
We finally ended up at a camp, 40 miles from our home. Yikes! We did not travel 40 miles on this dirt road. It wound and twisted up over the mountain, shortening the distance.
We knew we could go back the slow, winding dirt road, but figured there had to be a better way.
We stopped at the camp, which happened to be brimming with Boy Scouts.
We found a couple dropping off their son and they led us back a different way to the main road.
Quick shout out to Howard and his wife!
Finally, familiar looking terrain. We pulled back into our driveway at 11:00pm.
We were all laughing about our experience. It's so funny that you can live in an area your whole life and still manage to get lost on those dirt roads.
We had quite an adventure and I think we may just do it again.
Find a dirt road and just see where it goes.
When we were kids this was frequently our Sunday entertainment. We would all load into the car and mom or dad driving, we would head out for some odd ride around back roads. Usually we would end up somewhere that we could get an ice cream cone and then head back home.
ReplyDeleteDirt road adventures are the best! Sometimes I think Ryan and I enjoy it more than the kids but they're usually well behaved. They like to make up stories about the different things we see. Sometimes if we go through a heavily-wooded area they pretend we're in the Spooky Oooky Forest, or the Fairy Meadow if we come to a clearing with nice open fields. They tell each other about a haunted house and the people that might have lived there, etc, etc.... its such a nice way to just be a family and not spend any money (except gas of course, lol)
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