Making Tracks

There is a creek in our neighborhood, around the corner from our house, that Matt and the kids have explored a time or two. I decided that I needed to see this place for myself, so Christopher led the way. He insisted on bringing his fishing pole (and stink bait) with us just in case he could fish, even though Matt (who was at work) assured me that there was no way that Christopher would be able to fish without getting tangled up in brush or trees.

Nice...
As we were walking along we saw LOTS of these:

and these...

I guess lots of deer and raccoons hang out around here! And each and every time that we saw tracks, the kids insisted that I take a picture of it! Carson was holding my phone and took pictures with it too.

Along the path there was a huge puddle that Carson kept wanting to touch. ???

And Christopher thought fishing in it might be a good idea. I stopped that one before he began casting into the 1 1/2 inches of water. ???

Touching wasn't going to cut it...she had to pick it up! YUCK! (And remember she was carrying my phone??) Let's just say that my phone is sticky and gross A LOT!

I'm following these goofballs into these woods? There were two paths and neither one of them could decide which one we should take.

If the path we decided to take had looked like this the whole time, things would have been good.

But the path began to look more and more like this...it grew smaller and smaller and we were having to hold branches back to make our way through...this wasn't exactly what I had imagined...this was a little more snakey than I could handle! And, let's not forget Christopher was making his way through the "thicket" carrying a long fishing pole, still uncertain that we were heading the right direction.

I am usually the navigator and I consider myself to be someone that has a good sense of direction, but I wasn't thrilled with how things were going. We did eventually see the creek. It was big. There was lots of muddyish water. And because we were standing near the edge of a cliff-like structure I didn't take any pics. One little peek of the creek and Carson and I were ready to head back to civilization. On the way back through the woods we saw more of these:

Christopher was tired of having his picture taken. :)

Carson started taking pictures of me taking pictures of her.

Christopher ended the trip by pretending to shoot a squirrel with his fishing pole. I remember when we didn't play guns, make guns, have guns...what happened to those days?

Later in the afternoon I talked to Matt on the phone and told him about our adventure...I was sure that certainly we had taken the wrong path to the creek. Well, yes, it turns out that we may have opted for a more treacherous route, but he assured me that we experienced all of the fun...the exploring along the way! :) We'll have to save making our way closer to the creek for a day when we have Matt as our guide!