I had the opportunity to do four things that I enjoy very much today:
- I got to be lazy.
- I got to spend the morning with my daughter.
- We spent a lazy morning on a lake.
- We went to have lunch.
We both had decided that we missed canoeing, so we went to one of the nearby State Parks (Lums Pond State Park) and rented a canoe. It was lazy, we weren't racing anyone, and we simply paddled from place to place looking at whatever we wanted to look at.
(Yes, that is the child, allowing me a picture of her)
It was a bright, sunny day, and I'm glad we got out early because it really did begin to get hot on the water. But it was brilliant!
We found a neat looking bridge in the distance, and since we were neither rushed for time nor had any other preconceived notion of what we wanted to do other than to float about, we went to explore. Behold: it was a foot bridge!
I took the opportunity to snap a really bad selfie. Yes, I realise I haven't shaved. Please refer to point number 1 above.
Ultimately on the way back to shore I saw a fallen tree I wanted to look closer at. When we got closer we saw a heron on it. It turns out that the zoom function on my camera's phone isn't all that bad, but next time I think I want to bring my dSLR out with me. Carefully, of course.
After we finished up we decided to go for lunch because, well, it was lunch time. I took her to the Wilmington Riverfront Market in Wilmington (hence the name) and, in doing so, not only treated us both to lunch, but also kept myself ahead of the game for this weeks #marketfriday (or #fridaymarket - #toomanyhashtags!) (@dswigle). This is called being proactive.
It's not really a market, per se, but rather mostly an executive cafeteria. It used to be a fish guttery, but the building has been saved and repurposed. Seeing this sort of re-use makes me happy.
This was a much better ending to a day on the water than what we have had previously, which ended up looking just like this:
Look at where I am 'sitting' in relation to the dingy. It ended up no good at all. That particular trip started ominously, with me getting tossed from the raft on the very first rapid. It was awful. Not only did I get tossed, I lost a shoe, the water proof camera, and my daughter lost her oar. Thankfully one of the other rafters returned my shoe to me, but the camera and oar were lost. She had to spend the entire three hour trip just sitting and enjoying the ride, and I spent it keeping my leg submerged in the near-freezing water because I had thought I had broken it.
The very last rapid I was feeling good about myself, so I tackled it. Well.. it turned out about as you see. I ended up in the water. She ended up in the water. I lost both my shoes this time (no recovering them) and, I think, my pride. I was more concerned about the girl. Once I got my head above water and saw her about 20 yards down river waving at me I figured we were alright. We were near the pull out and the people there were ready to come get us.
After getting out of the river and drying off (without my shoes, mind you, because they were lost to all mankind at this point) the sky opened up and dumped on us. And I couldn't even go into the cafeteria to get a hot coffee, because I had no shoes.
But... we laugh about it to this day, and she still wants to go rafting again, so it was a good trip. Today was much more calm. And I kept my shoes.
