World's Greatest Explorers...

Planet Earth has been adventured by many amazing explorers. 

First there was Marco Polo, a Venetian traveller who made tremendous journeys to explore Asia and China. 


Then there was Christopher Columbus, an Italian explorer who made four ground-breaking voyages to the Americas.

Christopher_Columbus
And now we have the Craft family who tirelessly searched for the most beautiful sites in a County park 50 minutes away from home...




Yes, the Crafts buckled up long enough to watch half of Zootopia and brave the wilderness for a few hours with nothing more than graham crackers and four water bottles. And for anyone with four small children... you know this was no easy feat.


Long ago (about 3 decades to be exact) Matt, his many cousins, his father, and uncles would pack up on Mother's Day, say bon voyage to the ladies for an afternoon and explore Pinicon Park with a bucket of chicken and a 24 pack of Budweiser. Actually I think just the kids explored. Pretty sure the men stayed back to mind the beer. 

Anyway, Matt thought it might be a good idea to venture back to Pinicon Park with his brood of children and his wife. Matt knows my heart belongs to the outdoors, especially if it means exploring/hiking in the woods. I have to say it was a family adventure enjoyed by all, and if I must be honest that came as a surprise. Even Maddie hopped out of the stroller for awhile to dip a toe in the creek and run through the "forest."



Some parts of the trail were steep enough to warrant man made stairs. This part of the hike was a hit!




The gods of exploration must have been with us because we somehow hit all the highlights we wanted to see without a map. While I have many talents, understanding my location without a map is not one of of them. I am directionally challenged. Thankfully Matt is full on Magellan and we found the fun little rock spots to play in and an enormously tall tower to climb above the treetops. The view was pretty spectacular.



Thank goodness the whole thing was caged!!!!


We even found the paddle boats. I stayed back with Maddie and ate chips with a side of Snickers at the playground while Matt took the other three out for a ride. And after hiking, boating, climbing, and playground-ing we stopped at Casey's for a quick in-the-van dinner before bedtime because that's the Iowa way. It was a fun day of exploration and I can't wait to see where we end up next time.


Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

October things...

Image
It has not been the easiest October on record. Kate had a couple of hospital visits to Rochester but she is somewhat better at the moment. She continues with chemotherapy and has not been back to school for quite some time but she is doing her best to set aside time for online school work between naps, loving on cats, and hanging out with her family. I was able to get the girls to visit their great grandma in western Iowa a few weeks back. Here's Claudia shortly after arriving at great grandma's house. She is very into jewelry and lots of it. Grandma had several questions for her about the number of bracelets and thankfully Claudia loves talking about them. Many she has made, some were gifted to her...it's a lovely hodgepodge of middle school girl goodies. Clearly the girls and I were blessed with height genes from relatives not named great grandma. We spent time relaxing, taking four wheeler rides, eating candy and we also received a visit from my aunt and uncle. Aunt Deb ...
Read more

March Madness 2024...

Let's talk brackets. I love a good competition. I love to win. But when I don't win I can typically move on quite quickly from a loss (unless we are specifically talking about Big Six Swim Offs, but I digress.) We have a family group on ESPN for the men's NCAA basketball tournament and it's "high stakes" with no entry fee, a chocolate rabbit for the winner and most importantly bragging rights. While I've never won, nor have I ever been close to winning, I thought I'd share my rationale for my picks through the first round of play. You should not follow this advice but if you so choose to, don't blame me when you too lose out to a cat with it's own bracket. East Region UConn 1 v Stetson 16: This is a silly way to start because it's a 16 v a 1 seed and clearly we know the very likely outcome of this game. But if I could, I'd choose Stetson cologne over a Huskie dog because Huskies kind of scare me a little. Regardless I am going with the ...
Read more

The dark day of June 27th...

 June 12, 2023 We typically don't share a lot of updates about Kate's health, primarily because she wants to remain "a normal teenager." However, we still get asked how Kate is doing and I started thinking maybe it's okay to share updates now and again. Most people care about her and our family, some others could maybe be labeled as "tragedy junkies," but I'm going to operate under the assumption that most people have the best of intentions.  Today is June 12th and we are quickly approaching the dreaded dark day of June 27th. Have you watched, "Gilmore Girls?" It's a witty, comforting television show from the early 2000's. In it one of the main characters has what is dubbed, "a dark day." This is a day the character dreads each year and in response he goes into hiding from the world with no communication. Well for Kate, and the rest of us to some degree, the dark day of the year is June 27th and that date is closing in on ...
Read more