Life is an adventure! Then you rest...

I am back to work today. My Stay-Ca-Tion was great! More on the other things we did in some other post. Today I'm going to talk about yesterday!

We decided that the girls and I would go on a picnic at a park about 30 minutes away. So we packed a lunch, made sure we had bug spray and sun screen and headed out! And I'm going to apologize right now! My camera had some funky smeary thing in the middle of the lens the whole time! shoot.

Since the flooding took down most of Central Iowa, I had to do some creative back road driving to find the park. The girls had been there with Robb a while back, but I'd never been. We arrived and found that the lower part of the park closed to cars because of the flooding. Darn! So we hiked it.

Yep pretty smart huh? The only ones in the park...

We walked down the road that wove back and forth down the densely wooded hillside until we finally came to the bottom where the swollen creek that usually trickles through the park was. It was still rushing, but not as bad as it had been, judging from the silt and sludge all along the parking lots and picnic tables.

The only other people we came upon was a young hiking couple that warned us about water over the road up ahead and that we'd be fine in our flip flops. The water was rushing over the roads and concerned with drowning, I went first just to see how strong the current was. The water was about 6-12 inches deep and the current was strong, but we'd be ok. The girls and I held hands and walked slowly across carrying our shoes in some cases.

As we walked through the valley of trees, water and mud, different movies came to mind. Maddy and Meri said that this reminded them of Jurassic Park and expected a dinosaur to come running around a corner. A small wooden bridge reminded Maddy of Harpers Island and she almost wouldn't cross it. With absolutely no one around, I felt like we'd fallen into some apocalyptic land and we were the only ones left in the ruins. At other times I felt like I was in the set of Planet of the Apes. Weird feeling! whoa.

What a mucky mucky mess! The park people have a LOT of work to do to clean this up! We'll be back so I can see it all again in it's full glory.

We forded two streams until we came to a third and I wondered if the road actually went all the way around or if we were just going to have to backtrack a ton... We decided at the silted over parking lot to go back across the last flooded road and hike straight up the hill to Inspiration point that we'd passed on the way down.

It was a very long hike up and my heart was going a mile a minute.

After several breaks, stops and starts, we finally made it up to the Inspiration Point sign again where I'd taken a before pic of the girls... So I took an after pic too. Meri glistened in sweat this time and they both felt miserable after the climb. No way was I going to take a picture of me!

I think if we did this hike once a week, I'd be to my goal weight pretty darn quick! I just don't think I want to get to that goal quite yet if it means a heart attack... and more climbing...