gunpowder falls to the rescue

I know why my stomach hurts today. Money is tight. Things are not going well in the banking and billing department. There is nothing I can do to change the way things are headed until I can work at the school in the fall. Hopefully I can keep my stomach at bay long enough to resolve our money problems. We promised the kids a mini-trip every week this summer, in lieu of a large family vacation that we cannot afford. We were supposed to go bowling yesterday, but we have no funds. And I mean none. I can't squeeze a drop from the money machine and the kids watched the little box spit my card out without any money; their little faces fell. Damn.

I could mope and be miserable about it. But since I'm looking at the bigger picture today, I suddenly remembered something we could do for free. Out in the wild. I just hoped I could convince the kids to be excited about it.

There's a trail head for a HUGE state park ten minutes from our house. We donned water shoes and hats. I passed out icy water bottles. I gathered up a few small plastic tubs, the camera and our bugscope, and we headed for the trails. We hike a lot out here, so they recognized our destination as soon as we rounded a certain curve. By the time we parked, they were chattering on about getting to slosh through the creek. Usually we forget our water shoes.

We first noticed that the creek was low and murky. We talked in depth about the lack of rain and how that effects the water system. We watched a rather large (creeeeepy) spider wrap up a little something for its lunch. We caught a daddy longlegs and looked at his body through the bugscope. Did you know that daddy longlegs legs are fatter where they join to its body? We do now. We got to the end of one path, where we usually turn back, but today we plunged in and marveled at everything we got to see. We caught a few crawfish and watched them scurry in our plastic tub.

We also managed to track down this super speedy tadpole, and used our bugscope to see it's teeeny eeensy legs forming on its sides.

The dragonflies and pond skippers were too quick for us, but we snapped some awesome shots of two different species of butterfly, sunning on the rocks. I have not determined what kind of butterfly is above, but this is either the eastern tiger swallowtail or the appalachian swallowtail, below.


The Princess trying her hardest to catch those quick minnows...and catching lots of water in the process!

A sopping wet Hercules thoroughly enjoying his catch....of rocks! Would you like a taste? I can cook them to order!


King Schmoo of the creek says: no mere rushing water can knock me down! See how sturdy I stand in the water pouring off the rocks. Alright, ma, take the picture already.

Big Sister Bear, minnow catcher extrordinaire! She actually caught about 15 of the little buggers and let the kids hold them (in the buckets) and get pics taken. Those are some FAST hands!!


On the way back to the car, we happened to notice that our eight-legged recently-fed friend was no longer in its web. In fact, the entire web was missing as well. We could only surmise that it made a tasty treat for any of the robins or cardinals swooping in the trees nearby. Today I learned that I really had nothing to worry about on this excursion. They proclaimed this to be more fun (and more educational, one pointed out) than sitting in the bowling alley anyway. They had so much fun, they asked if we could make this our trip next week. Except next week, we'll need to bring a picnic lunch. Sitting back and watching the kids splash in the creek and looking at the big picture, things aren't so bad. We'll figure this money thing out. Then we can go bowling; that is, if the kids still want to.