A Walk Down Memory Lane July 22, 2009

Come for a walk with me down Memory Lane!
And if you have a "Memory Lane" post, head on over to Scottsville to join in on the fun!
I am the baby being held by my mom. My sister is hiding behind my mom, but you can see her shoes and her side. I believe this is about 1959. I must be almost one or I am one year old in this picture.

Isn't my mom's suit cool? I love the way people dressed in the 50's. It has to be Sunday after church because we didn't dress up like this just any day of the week.

I hope you enjoyed this Walk Down Memory Lane. Hop over to scottsville for more stories and pictures.

Our Ninth Letter Box July 18, 2009

This is a continuation of Letterboxing The Third Time which
I posted on July 19. We went from one park to the next.

We are so blessed to have so many nice parks around here. The first park had a pond and this one is on the bay. It was such a beautiful day for hiking an easy trail or two, so we did.

At the parking lot were these beauties.

Then we found some sticks and headed up the trail.



My son read the clues. Hey, did you notice he has gotten a haircut? I like it that way.

Here's my daughter and I standing under the road. Well it's a bridge. Nan, from momstheword lives pretty close to this park.

These pictures explain themselves. Beautiful area to hike.





I had to take pictures of this nurse stump. This is the bottom.

This is a little further up. Looking rather holey and weak to me.

Here's the beginning of another tree that must be ten or twenty years old. I can't believe it's still upright.

And there it grows right up to the sky. Amazing!

For those folks who leave home with their little doggie and forget the poop scoop bag...this one's for you. Glad we saw it before we stepped in it. I love dogs, but prefer that they have responsible pet owners.

Then there's God's creation that imitates poop. Yuck! LOL, actually this is prettier than poop if you like nature enough.

Then we have our banana version. Some can be very long and oh so oohey goohey. Ugh!

Moving on to the actual letterbox. I took my stick to smush down stickery things and saw the piece of bark that looked like it didn't belong. I lifted it up and there was our 9th letterbox.

I'm bringing it back to the path. It's cool how people use all kinds of camouflage tape to disguise their letterboxes. This one looked like leaves.

I sustained a horrible injury!! LOL, not really.

We came back down the trail after hiking a little further for the fun of it and the kids went to the car to rest. I went to the beach to take pictures.



There's always a shoe or two on the beach. Someone was kind enough to put this one at the beach head on a stump in case the owner returned for it.

There was a birthday party across the creek. There were a lot of people at the park on this day. Look at how dry the grass is. We are having one dry summer.

A bridge across the creek.

The birthday kids were playing in the creek. It smelled bad and there was lot's of seaweed, but they didn't mind.

Peaceful sailboat waiting for it's owners to come and take it for a sail.

Every beach needs a snack bar with overpriced treats and snacks. This snack bar is very old. A historical monument...just kidding!

And lastly was this great little garden planted in an old dry hunk of log. What a great idea! Who'd a thunk?

Parade Fun

This weekend was a busy one. After our letterboxing fun we went to lunch, home briefly and then off to a parade. There's a small town next to us and they celebrated their 50th birthday this month. So they had a parade.

This would be a vendor in an interesting hat. He wanted us to buy silly string.

Here's our little group. My friend is standing, her daughter and ours are on the ground and my hubby is sitting in the chair.

I don't know if you can see, but next to us are some little boys in orange and green hats and outfits. They were triplets and one big brother. They drew a lot of attention from the parade participants so they got lot's of candy and stickers. Their mom was very pleased.

Our boys, buddies since pre school, were getting restless waiting for the parade to begin so they stood in the middle of the street. Whatever...

Here comes the Navy Color Guard starting the parade. GO NAVY!!



This car was 100 years old. The people were dressed in some old fashioned clothes. It was cute.





These little girls were so cute and some of them were very young. That was a long walk for them. One little one looked like she had blisters on her feet cuz she winced with every step. And you know how they stomp their left foot every step of the way. Owe!



This old car was being towed by a large tow truck. There were a few towing companies represented in this parade. More cool tow truck pictures later.

We have some famous pirates in our area. They really enjoy what they do. They were scaring women and children and passing out stickers or candy. They also have this big float that looks like a pirate ship. They are in many parades.

Here's the float with a very loud cannon on it which they fire several times as they go along the parade route. It is quite fun.

These Labradors were so cute. They were carrying baskets and flags in their mouths. Their leader would call them and they'd all come to her and do a zig zag and circle a little bit. They were quite impressive.

Two school bus companies were represented. Both had a cause they were promoting. This one was having a diaper drive. "Stuff the bus with diapers" I think the sign said. This kid was inside this play bus tent and he would run around at full speed and stop and squat for a minute and take off again. He did a great job.

Here's my favorite part at the end of the parade. This is a Jeep on a tow truck on top of another tow truck.

And this is my very, very favorite part. How many tow trucks can a tow truck tow? This was the name of one of our favorite books when the kids were little. Well this huge tow truck had eleven tow trucks behind him. Each truck was being towed by the one in front of it. I was very impressed.

I love a good parade. This one was small so the traffic leaving was minimal. All in a day's fun.

Letterboxing The Third Time

I promised to expand on what we did this weekend if anyone is interested. The kids and I went to hunt for another letterbox at a local park very close to our house.

I found the clues on Atlas Quest, a website that tells all about letterboxing and gives clues to find them all over the USA and possibly the world (I haven't needed to check for that yet).

Here I am looking kinda goofy, but that's me. I always seem to be asking, "Did you get it?" right when the picture is being taken. This is where we went to search.

I've always loved this weeping willow tree. Last year I took the kids school pictures at this park. It's the perfect place for it.

This is the cutest little bridge. My favorite pictures of our kids are the ones I took of them on this bridge. We passed the bridge and headed for the Totem Pole.

I read a little bit about the pole. The best story was the part about the second section from the bottom. It told the legend of how we got mosquitoes.

Basically this monster or giant was bothering the village people and they finally dug a huge pit which he fell into. They burned him in it. He vowed to bother them forever and mosquitoes flew out of the pit of burning embers to pester everyone for eternity. Well something like that.

This is where we found the letterbox. The clue was to find it at the base of the tree. So I started at the front of the tree.

With a stick I dug dead leaves and moved weeds around working my way around the base of the tree. It wasn't in the front or on the left or in the back. Finally, I dug a bunch of leaves away on the remaining side and spotted the camouflage pouch.

Can you see it? It was pushed down in the wet dirt pretty good. I asked my kids if they wanted to be the one to pull it out and "Nope" was their answer.

I took a stick and loosened it up so I could get a good hold on it. I pulled it out and backed out of the weeds.

I'm holding it out in my left hand looking around to see if anyone is coming. I'm sure people would wonder what I'm doing digging around in the bushes while two kids are watching.

This is the Old Fishing Hole. Only kids 14 and under can fish here year round. It is stalked with trout once a year and there are other types of fish that live here naturally.

When the river across the road gets near flood stage it will over flow through the drain pipe and fill the pond up a lot in the winter and early spring.

A lot of silt fills the area and there's lot of pond weed there which apparently uses up a lot of oxygen. It also provides hiding places for the fish. The fish living there are a type that don't require a lot of oxygen.

I read the information board and just remembered a few things. I don't naturally know all about ponds and fish and stuff. I had to share something new. New to me anyway.

Here's my son, JB. He was a good sport about my adventure idea. Once he warmed up to being at the park anyway.

At first he was just wanting to get it over with. Once we found the letterbox he was ready to go find another letterbox at another park.

This is my younger child, H. She still wasn't too excited about my plans for adventure and wanted to go home. As you can see on her face.

When we got to the car, I got the directions out for the next park to find a letterbox, H was not happy, but she was a good sport about it and didn't whine too much.

Once we got on the trail for the next search, she was much more eager and enjoyed the rest of the day. We ended with lunch at a new fast food joint which was a treat for the kids cuz we don't eat out much.

Here's a picture of the chicken out front of Churches Fried Chicken. He was very energetic and I imagine he was very hot. He posed for about four pictures for me, but one is enough.

Happy letterboxing! I have more pictures of the next place we went, but I'll share those another time.