Come with me and escape

After supper last night, I said to Robb, "Wanna get out of here and go for a drive?"

"Sure!  Where do you want to go?"

I had no idea.  I just knew "out of the house."

So he came up with an idea.  Way back when Leon was a baby and Robb and Leon were left to their own devices on a Saturday morning, Robb would take him on a drive to a beautiful little corner of central Iowa, The Ledges state park.

Not like Leon would appreciate it or even remember but it gave them some place to go and it would lull Leon to sleep for a much needed nap.

The creek flows over the one way road through the park in a few different spots.

And so many little bridges and beautiful areas to have a picnic if we were so inclined.

We weren't.

Plus it was pretty chilly to get out and walk last night, so we just drove through slowly.

There are beautiful rock walls with water eating away very slowly underneath.

Gorgeous.

Almost ten years ago now, I took the girls here for an outing before school started.

But the Ledges were flooded out that year and there were sand dunes EVERYWHERE.  You couldn't get a car down there if you tried.

It seemed like a land of the lost and we had the park to ourselves.  That is until we met up with a couple taking a hike, but we didn't visit with them.

Social distancing, even then! :)

The mucky sand and silt made a nice cool break for our feet when we got a bit overheated.

And when we hiked out, we were.  Overheated...  and worn out.

So not TOO far from home, but what a beautiful place to escape to for a tiny bit.

Hanging Around

So Leon and I drove his dad to work yesterday afternoon and I decided to take him on an adventure.  I worked from a bench at the park while he made friends and played tag on the playground equipment.  When I wrapped things up, I showed him all over the park.  There is a band shell where they still have bands on hot summer nights.  

No one yesterday, except for this little rock star!

Then I took him with me to the blood bank and gave blood.  While I was waiting for a nurse to come back to me, I saw him grimacing and trying not to cry.  My laptop battery had died on him...  

and that is pure torture when you're in the middle of HobbyKidsTV videos!!!  So I ran out to the car and grabbed my power cords and set him up in the lobby watching more of them.  

Got my blood drained in relative peace.

And I don't know why, but he thinks the mat that we have on our floor in our bedroom is more comfortable than his bed.  REALLY?!!!  There is no logical speaking when he's determined.

Thankfully Meri came upstairs about that time and in an additional Birthday gifting mode, she took Leon downstairs for a sleepover.  However they watched Coraline, so I'm not sure if he'll be down for sleeping in his own bed tonight either... 

HEY!!!  ANOTHER SLEEPOVER WITH MERI!

AND I just found these pics on my phone from the weekend.  Swimming in the lake for Leon.

AND these awesome people.  Maybe that's why I've been melancholy lately...  I miss her and she's 5.5 hours away...

sigh.

Hanging in there in Iowa.  Have a good one!

Picnics and swimsuit secrets

I got to spend a lot of time with Leon yesterday morning!  So I thought I'd take him on a picnic.  He asked, "Is this a pic-a-nic or a picnic?"

What's the difference?

A pic-a-nic has bears.

Yeah... no. It's just a picnic.  There haven't been bears around here for a LOONNNGG time.

I wanted to make the food ahead of time, but he wanted to "picnic" at Casey's and get food from there.  ok...

Since I'm dieting, I made my salad and drinks and then we were off.  Got him a pizza slice from Casey's but since it was SO windy and kind of chill, I suggested that we have a car picnic.

What's that?

When you eat in the car, but you get to sit in the FRONT seat.

He was down with that.

I drove us to a park where there is a nice walk also.  And gave him an abbreviated version of this.  Yep - this was the ditch that his dad backed the Vue into one dark, rainy middle of the night.

He was impressed but really liked the dogs that lived on the other side of said ditch.

This was his lunch.

This was mine.  I've been making homemade poppyseed salad dressing lately and it is delish!!!  Sugar free.

Then we went for the walk.  He liked the path with the "hole in the trees."  But he could never quite reach it, so he got bored and cold and we walked back to the car.

He wanted to play on the baby playground and got bored... go figure.  So I let him run to the big kid's playground while I moved the car.  He had a blast.

Unfortunately I could only let him play about 10 more minutes as I had to get back home to work.

and he needed to catch the bus.

Fun times!  

Plus he got to wear his swimsuit under his clothes to school that day because they had been studying the ocean and beaches and they were having a beach party.  His beach towel and sandals were in his bag.

Isn't' it an awesome day when you know your swimsuit is under your clothes??

If you give the kids the camera

If you give the kids the camera,

Leon will ask for a side of Cheezits.

REALLY nicely...

If you give a kid some Cheezits, 

He will ask to run across the bridge.

If you let him run across the bridge,

He will ask to climb up the ladder.

If you let him climb up the ladder,

There's only one way down.

If you let him slide down,

he will ask to play on the seesaw.

 

If you let him play on the seesaw

 

it will only last a few seconds before he sees the Merry Go Round.

If you let him ride on the Merry Go Round,

 He will want to ride something else that he's already been on.

If you tell him "We've got to go home Honey!" and carry him to the car...

Crying ensues...

The only thing left to do is give the kid the camera.

It's covered in Cheezit bits now.

And who am I kidding?!  He never asked for any of these things. 

He demanded them.

I got my hair cut last night for the LAST time by a favorite hairdresser that I've used for the last umpteen years..  She's moving away and getting married!!!  How dare her!  I'm going to miss her!!  She and I have the same view points on everything...  Our kids are roughly the same ages, although they don't hang out together, but I've been going there since Maddy was a baby.  The lady who bought her shop is actually my hairdresser from before HER!  Who had moved away but recently moved back.  She's got kids my kids ages too! 

While I was there, Ryan, Meri & Leon had some free time to walk around town with the stroller and they had headed to the park.

Good plan!

Being a Boar

On Friday night, Meri and I took Leon to the local carousel.  Apparently it's one of the oldest in the state, if not the country!  He wasn't much thrilled with it...  He cried a lot until the thing actually started and would only ride if you were on the horse with him or if he was clinging to my neck on a bench.

Silly kid!  The girls manning it were friends of Maddy's and were very kind letting us find the exact right thing to ride on before they started the ride with the ungodly loud and raucous music...

 We got popcorn and left after 3 rides.   All three of us deaf by this time.

As we passed by the park next to it, I saw the playground and decided that I was going to add one more thing to my list of "Things I Can NOT Pass Up".  It ranks right up there with ALWAYS stop at a kids lemonade stand.  I have been known to count stray pennies from the bottom of my purse and floor of the car if I see a stand. Not sure how thrilled the kid is to get sticky coins, but they're always glad for a customer.

Leon LOVED the swings, slide and merry go-round.  Not so much the teeter totter.  But that's ok.  My legs couldn't take much of that one anyway.

 

On Saturday, I got to attend a tour with several women from my sewing group!  We toured a small local company that can make leather out of anything!  We saw the various steps they take to make leather out of deer, elephant, badger, ostrich, rhinoceros and even bear.  On one wall was a complete leatherized alligator...  It was pretty cool!  A little morbid, but cool...  

Yep, this is a wild boar.

I wasn't talking about my blog post, but if you think I was, that's ok.  This is MY post! and I can be "boaring" if I want!

 After the tour, I went out for lunch with some of the ladies.  Was VERY impressed by one of their husbands who goes with her to fabric stores on vacation...  

I know, right?  reallY???   But he enjoys things like that!  

wow.

I was impressed and a little jealous.  But then again, my spending has been inhibited, so I'm OK with my hubby staying in the car or going to a book store while I fabric hound!

Anywho, the ladies inspired me to get organized in my sewing area.  When I start a sewing project I usually get bogged down with "Where on earth is that sewing foot?" or "What did I do with the seam ripper?" sort of thing.  When you don't have the right tools handy, the smallest project becomes a chore.

Besides that, I spent other bits of the weekend helping Meri re-organize her bedroom.   

How was YOUR weekend?

Getting There Is 90% Of The Fun!

On Monday, only Meri and I were free to go explore at the park that I took the girls last year and the year before.  I decided to take the scenic route where I knew that there was a meat locker on the way...  They have the BEST beef jerky in the whole wide world!!!  

Plus some interesting decor!

Jerky in hand and already opened, we drove down the highway where Robb and I always bark at a house.  It's a long story and goes back 24 years.  But there used to be an annoying dog that lived there.  

It's tradition.  Can't fight it!

She agreed with me that this way to cross the river valley is the most breath taking!  She took a couple pictures from the car window, but the antennae and hood of the car were in it, so I stopped and told her to take it from the middle of the road.  

Perfect!  That highway goes almost straight down.  Wouldn't a skateboard be death here?

Here is some of the view at the bottom of the valley.  The river is pretty dried from the drought, but still beautiful.

We went back up the way we came down and starting meandering south where the park was.  We had all afternoon, why not?  The pavement turned into gravel and we meandered more.  Every time I came to a T intersection I turned left because I didn't want to get to the river again and I wanted to stay on this side.

Meri got out a few more times to take some GORGEOUS pictures of the hillside.  We live in flat land USA, so hills and trees are beautiful to us.  If we lived in them all the time, then I'm sure the plains would be inviting...  But I grew up in hilly Western Iowa and I sometimes feel nostalgic when I see a little hiccup of a hill now.

 We saw a turtle in the road and Meri took about 30 pictures of it crossing the road and going  into the brush.

We saw a hawk sitting on a fence and when I backed up for a picture, it flew off.  Meri managed to get this shot of it though from her window.  Way cool! 

See this river bed?  It's significant... just wait!

We drove on.  The hills got fewer and far between and we saw a crop duster!  He circled back and forth and we got lots of pics of him.  We drove on and on getting more close up.

After a while we noticed that we couldn't see any more trees from the river valley...  hmmm..  Curious!  I hadn't kept track of how far south we'd come, but we should have come to the highway by the park by now...  Peculiar!  I was sure it had been more than 10 miles...  

That's when I looked at the direction indicator in the car.  It had a big fat W showing up.  How could we be heading West???  Wouldn't we have had to cross the river to do that??  When did we cross it again? 

We would have noticed, wouldn't we??

Where in the world were we???

I'll tell you where!  Well on the way to my home town!!!  We turned South and I checked the direction indicator to make sure because I'd taken a wrong turn just a minute ago.

We went in a huge several mile square until we saw some kids on horseback.  From a distance we were sure they were Amish, but the closer we got, we realized Amish don't wear tank tops and cut offs... right?  We asked them how to get to the town where the park was.

"Oh!  Go North 1/2 mile to that highway (which I hadn't recognized so we had disregarded it earlier) and turn right.  It's about 8 miles East."

REALLY?!!!  

We finally got there!!!  After a few more false turns...  It was gorgeous and open!  For the past two years, flooding had taken out a bridge and it had been closed to cars.  You could only walk down.

NOW I see the attraction of this place.  It is truly a gorgeous place...

Purple Martins built mud nests.

Meri tried her best to catch tiny fish with her hands.  I tried to imagine what the little fish was thinking...  Coming here was a good idea!  We had a great time.

Oh and if anyone ever tells you to GET LOST!  DO it !  It's a blast!

Land of the Lost

Last year, my girls and I went hiking into an awesome park that I'd never been to before. It's on the hills around the Des Moines river valley and is quite a ways from our home, but close enough to do a day trip. But last year, the road down into the park was closed due to flooding, so we had to hike down and it seemed like we were in another world. No souls for miles and we half way expected dinosaurs or apes on horses to come around the bends.

Kind of a creepy feeling if you've got good imaginations...

which we do...

So this year. I called the park director to find out if the park was open yet. The damage from the flood last year was pretty extensive and I wasn't sure if there had been flooding this year or not. Turns out that there is a bridge on the lower entrance that is out but crews are working on it. We would still have to hike in if we wanted to go. We did.

I pulled into the parking lot at the north entrance and we saw a whole platoon of soldiers jogging up the closed road. *shoot* The girls didn't want to get out and hike down in front of them, so we decided to try our luck on the lower entrance. I drove out and down and found that indeed, the bridge was truly out. The girls didn't want to walk in front of these workmen either, but after going through the tall grass with lots of sticky weeds, they relented and we walked into "the park" past a bunch of workmen.

On the highway in, we walked and walked.

and walked and walked.

I was pretty sure we'd come to it pretty soon, but then we saw a satellite dish and then some houses where we could hear kids playing in the back yard. And then a campground... The road was abandoned tho. Probably because of the bridge work.

It was weird.

It was also then that I realized we'd probably missed the park entrance and didn't even realize it. I suggested that we turn around and head back. We had to get home in time to go to Robb's bagpipe performance and if we kept going on this weedy abandoned road, no telling if we'd have the energy to make it back to the car!

Someone in our group was upset and even laid in the middle of the road in frustration. I'm not saying who!

On the way back, we discovered that if the name of the park is on the side of the sign that faces us and we headed that way, then we're probably heading INTO the park NOW! hmm... Probably!With the bribery of ice cream on the way home and some pep talks, we made it back to the car dejected. I realized what time it was and that ice cream for lunch probably wasn't the most nutritious meal, so we opted for burgers & shakes from one of our favorite ma & pa fast food places before meeting up with Robb.

Found out later that the entrance to the park was completed gone. I mean GONE! The flooding had washed out not only the bridge we knew about on the highway but a bridge that wasn't there anymore and the whole area was sludged over with mud and muck. I should have taken Maddy's advice and hiked up the side of the hill over dangerous looking rocks. But I didn't want to have to carry anyone that fell on them back to the car.

Call me lazy!

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...