Geocaching: I had yet to look at the Notice boards around the park or I would have seen the trail description much sooner. Caddo Bend Trail, 4.5 miles, difficulty rating Strenuous, allow 3 hours: wish I'd noted that BEFORE heading out. Instead I was distracted by a cache at the trail head and didn't even look at the board. We got tired, hungry and didn't have enough water but it would have been a fantastic hike had we been better prepared. I would love to do this trail again sometime without the caching. It would be a crazy good trail run/speed hike. We did find some cool caches though, we even got 2 "STF"s. We had to explain to the girls what first to find and second to find meant, I think they were bummed to have missed out on the FTF too. We found a travel bug and a cache that was about 5 years old so it must be one of the first in the park if not the first. The log book cover was even partially melted with a note from park personnel explaining that the cover was damaged in a leaf fire.
Swimming: J said it was interesting. I still don't know how I feel about it. I learned a lot. Like I can't really swim. I thought I could but I can't. I didn't make it 500 yards, I turned over on my back more than once and apparently I can't site worth a darn and kept going in zig zags. It did not improve my confidence any but I've signed up so there's no backing out now.
Entertainment: The girls both spent a lot of time up to their butts in the lake, messing with fish, messing with each other and a bit of messing around with the tandem kayak. Man was it so much better to have 2 kids to entertain each other. Luckily they are both readers too so we all spent some time in our books. The evening Owl Prowl was interesting. I'm glad the owl finally decided to pay us a visit. I think both girls had a good time AFTER the hike in the dark which had my kid worrying about getting eaten (silly) and the other one talking about hallucinations in the dark. Cool activity- the interpreter handed out post it notes and an unwrapped crayon nubbin and asked us to write down what color we had. I was close, it was purple but I wrote blue, J had green and wrote brown but that doesn't count because he can't tell the difference in the daytime. I think Mc's friend Al got hers right and Mc was close with orange for red.
Mid America Museum: J says the bodies creeped him out. I thought it was fascinating and could have stayed at least another 1/2 hour in there but ... I understand where some would find it disturbing if not downright gross.
Food: Oh man. What we brought to fix ourselves to eat wasn't bad. I had made a cold pasta dish ahead of time, and some muffins. We had "low fat" mac n cheese with the obligatory side of grilled spam for lunch and a no fat refried bean, organic black bean , low fat cheese burrito w/chips and salsa dinner. It was the McDonalds french fries, iced mocha on Friday with the big mac (me!) meal after geocaching Saturday and the root beer float and nachos (not at the same time) at Magic Springs Sat night. Then there was the GINORMOUS burger and fries AND onion rings at Magic Springs on Monday afternoon. UGH. Did not need that. It might have been okay if we hadn't decided it was a good idea to go ride the gauntlet too soon after that.
at the last second- Mc's friend A backed out. We all decided she got the award for "smart" since we ended up leaving the park shortly after that.
After unloading the car and sitting down for a well deserved turn in front of CNN, I made a small dinner of grilled chicken and brown rice trying to make up for the junk food weekend. I'll spend the next couple of days catching up on laundry... it'll be worth it... another good weekend outside.
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