My Apologies

I have to offer my apologies...I kind of left you all hangin about the final part of our river trip. It really is quite brief so I will share it now.

Well...if you have been keeping up (and you should be!) then you know we were on a trip to the Brazos River and on our first trip down to the water we found what we believed to be leeches in deem'dar waters! We were less than enthused about that thought as we prepared to canoe the river the next morning...well I was at least! We got up a little early, had eggs, sausage and cinnamon rolls for breakfast, made our sandwiches, packed the ice chests and were ready to head out when our ride got there around 9am. I wasn't sure how many miles we were going, but he had said the day before it would take 5 or 6 hours..so we didn't want to get too late of a start. The upside was that no one was booked in the cottage after us, so we got to leave our stuff there and go back and shower before we head home. Bonus!

We all piled in the van (with no A/C) and were chatting with the man while driving to the drop point. He asked if we swam any the night before. I told him the kids got in the water for awhile, but didn't stay long after they made their Animal Channel discovery of leeches. Now know, I totally and completely had an ulterior motive in mentioning this. I wanted to know if they really were leeches BEFORE I got back in the water. On the surface I was my normally calm, cool and collected self...inside - not so much! He kind of snickered and said..."Everyone always thinks that, but they really are just worms." He explained that they are kind of like the sucker fish you see in fish tanks that clean up the algae. They attach to the sides of the fish and eat "stuff" off of them. He made sure to point out they are harmless and do not break the skin. Hearing this did make me feel better, but in my mind to take me the rest of the way to ok with it, I reminded myself of all the super wealthy women who go to the super fancy and expensive day spas that have those spa treatments where they put their feet in tanks of fish and the fish eat the dead skin cells off of their feet. So, if you think of that, then this is just the redneck version of a spa treatment! Another bonus!

Here is a picture of the redneck spa treatment in action.

Even after filling my head with thoughts of really soft supple feet, I still cleaned them off every time we stopped to swim. (I will stick to my local nail salon for pedicures, but thanks anyways!)

The rest of the day was filled with beautiful scenes, family fun (like splashing each other with the paddles), Josh trying to learn to steer the canoe and not zigzag all the way down the river, swimming, rock skipping and a really great day. I am ready to do it all again.

Since it takes so long to up load pictures here, I am going to leave you with a link to the rest of the pictures..here

Oh and before I forget...I found the video I thought I had lost! I am not sure if it is just my computer or not, but the sound on the video is way ahead of where it should be (checked it...it has to do with windows media player on my computer I guess...it is fine on flickr). You can watch it..here

Brazos River Trip Low Down - Part 2

When Roger and Josh got back from the store I shared our leech horror store with him and I noticed what he paid at the little quick stop for the sandwich stuff - which is a horror story in its own right! (Note to self - take lunch meat and cheese with you from home next time!!!)

Josh was ready to go fish so we all grabbed some towels to sit on (I was pretty sure none of us were getting in "that" water that night so we wouldn't need them to dry off with) and we headed back down the hill. Now for those of you who don't know, Josh loves to fish and always has.Now Kylie has been pestering Josh about taking her fishing for well..what seems like forever! So she is very excited to go. Josh helps her get a pole ready and helps her bait it.


Like most things around here...if you want to hang with the boys there is no acting girlie allowed! She had to dig her own worm out for Josh to put on the hook.


I think she handled it pretty well! lol We were informed that they let water out of the dam at night and that the water would rise quite rapidly and by as much as 4 to 6 feet. When we first got down there nothing had changed. But while we were there we began to notice the water moving. At first just barely..then faster and faster and faster. The problem with this was that it would take the line with it and "stuff" would collect on the weights on the lines resulting in...

MOSS MONSTERS!!!! This was one of the smaller ones. I had an amazingly funny video, but I am afraid it may have been deleted by accident. I will keep look for it and if I find I will post it. This was where the butt shaking came in...Roger and Kylie were shaking their bootay's on camera so I really really hope I can find it!

Fishing just isn't my thing. It is how do you say..BORING!!!! So the help his sister keep from having to hold her pole the whole time Josh took what was available to him and made her a pole holder.
This was made with a discarded grill from a small charcoal grill. He was fishing with two poles so he had to come up with his own solution.

Using a large spoon shaped spinner lure, he dug holes to put his poles in. This picture is also an example of the water continuing to rise. It was coming up fast!

Tune in tomorrow for Part 3 of our River trip...more on the leeches, more skipping rocks, muscle heads, and scenic shots

Brazos River Trip Low Down - Part 1

So far this summer we had not managed to really take a vacation of any kind yet...so we decided late last Friday night to plan a short trip to the river to canoe down it. A while back we were on our way home from a family reunion with Chris and his family and we saw a sign for a RV park that offered canoe rentals, so we decided to stop, stay the night and canoe the next day. The kids had a blast so that is the main reason we decide to go again.

The main difference this time was that we were not taking the bus so we needed a place to stay that had a cabin to rent. I didn't realize that this would be harder to find than I thought and what are the odds that we would find something that was actually available on immediate notice? I found a place that looked promising, but had to wait until Saturday to see if it was open that night. It was called The River Place Cottage a bed and breakfast... I called, it was available that night!

It sounded perfect. Two bedroom, sleeps 6, right on the river, sit on the porch and watch the canoes go by... One thing it didn't mention was that as close as the river was to the front of the cottage, the road was to the side of the cottage! The road noise did dampen the atmosphere a bit...but hey we could live with that.

Once we got there and checked in, we needed to get a few supplies. They provided us with eggs, sausage and fresh (home made) bread delivered shortly after we arrived. This was the breakfast part of "Bed and Breakfast"! So Roger and Josh went to the quick stop to get a few groceries and bait and I took Kylie and Cameron down to get in the water. The river was absolutely beautiful at the time. It was smooth as glass, calm and serene...except for the occasional car or truck passing by on the bridge (some of which would honk and wave like long lost friends). (The picture below has a lightroom preset used to brighten up the colors...so just go with it(Liz!)! It was very nice in reality too, but I was playing with my pictures!!)


The kids were wading and skipping rocks. They were both barefoot since Cameron is too macho for water shoes and Kylie's were in the towel bag (in the car that Roger took). The ground wasn't yucky so it wasn't a big deal...or so I thought.





After a short while Kylie walked out of the water and was messing with her feet. I was taking pictures of course. Next thing I know there is a cry of horror coming from my baby girl...in my head I would have sworn she squealed "leeches!!!!" Ok...now time slows to a crawl (in my head) and I am thinking "No way!!! Not leaehes!" My minds eye is seeing large black slimey blood suckers - you know, the kind you see on TV jungle shows like Rambo. The ones you have to have a large sharp Rambo knife to remove! All the while I am trying to get to Kylie (remember...this is in slow motion) she is dancing around on one foot crying and frantically clawing at her feet at the same time. I try to calm her down so I can try to see what she is talking about (while internally fighting the strong urge to drop everything and peel my own lake shoes off and inspect my feet). I maintain my motherly composure and check my child first to find these tiny little brownish colored wriggling "things" attached to my baby girls feet. I had no idea what they were...my thought was that they were indeed some local (yet miniture) distant cousin of the jungle leeches. There were only few and they removed quite easilyleaving no mark at all. Cameron had them on his feet as well...so the only thing I could think was that they were indeed leeches that lived in the sea weed (or rather river weed?) looking stuff the kids were walking through in the water. I didn't have any, not sure if it was because of the lake shoes or the fact that I was barely in the water or my feet didn't smell bad enough to attract the critters. But no matter...we were done getting in the water for the evening! As we walked back up the hill...in my mind (again) I am fast forwarding to tomorrow when we would be back down to the river and trying to figure out how I was going to make it all the way down the river in a canoe without ever actually getting in that water!!!

Tune in tomorrow for part 2 ...Fishing, butt shaking, water rising, Monsters and faces!