martinzoo

Gramma and Grampa came over yesterday and took advantage of our park day with the homeschoolers. Our group alternates parks every other week. And this particular park is pretty far for us to get to. It takes us about 40 minutes to get there. But that just goes to show how spread out the homeschoolers are around here.

Anyway, we homeschoolers usually meet around 1:30. And Grampa has been bugging GB and I to go letterboxing again soon. So when I went on the letterboxing site I saw that there were several boxes in this particular park. So I fullfilled my haircutting duties and off we went to the park.

Once we got there I discovered I had made a major boo-boo. I had forgotten to bring the clues to the letterbox. I was SO bummed. But Gramma and Grampa were so enchanted with the park that we decided to just do the nature trail, which turned out to be about a mile and a half trek around the park. And it is SUCH a beautiful trail. It skims right along the beautiful James River and has lots of benches to sit and watch the water flow. I loved it!

Here, GB is partaking of one of the nicely placed benches, and getting acorns dropped on his head……..LOL!

The wind was something fierce. See how it’s blowing his shirt all over? GB was genuinely worried that he may get blown away.  In fact, as I write, we are under a wind advisory.

Here are Gramma and Grampa with their nicely coiffed hair.

Isn’t the river pretty?

This was a boat landing. Although, I couldn’t imagine actually bringing ours out here. It’s pretty dry. But maybe it’ll be better next year. GB was enjoying the hill while Grampa conducted an experiment to prove which way the river flowed. I said something about how the river was flowing fast, and he said “No, that’s just the wind. The river actually flows in the other direction, towards Richmond.” So he promptly threw a light stick in there and made us watch as it actually moved against the wind in the opposite direction, albeit a bit slowly due to wind conditions.

I remember Grampa thinking he was tough and doing this to me when I was a kid. Little did he know that I just thought it was annoying and frustrating. I’m pretty sure GB was having similar thoughts.  But yeah, Grampa, I’ll concede, you’re still strong…………for an old guy……….LOL!

I thought this tree was really cool. It literally grew out of the river bank like that. But the erosion on the sides of the bank made it seem like it wasn’t long for this world, which will be a shame.

After our journey around the trail, where I took no pictures of the beautiful wild flowers (what’s up with that?), we had a nice picnic. It was windy and chilly, but the view more than made up for it.

Then Gramma and Grampa went on their way and GB and I stayed for his weekly Wednesday park day. He looks forward to this day more than any other during the week, even weekends! So it’s really easy for me to say, “If you don’t behave, there will be no park day.”……..LOL! ………. I have to use what I’ve got, you know?