A New Local Treasure!

We've been living on this lake since August of 2009 and, in that time, we haven't ever visited the state park locations to play!

While Eric and Connor leave for the days/evenings to go fishing, Ramsey, Mom, and I need something "outdoorsy" to do too (walking up and down the hilly gravel road has somewhat lost its novelty, even though the views are beautiful).   So, I purchased a state park pass and we did some exploring on Sunday afternoon, after we got our chores done.

This lake has two main "parks", plus boat ramps and other scenic views.  We ventured to one of the southern areas that has a playground for kids, plus camping, fishing areas, nice paved areas to walk, hiking trails, and a beach.  I was actually pleasantly shocked at what was there!

Drum roll please....

I was really surprised to see this, smack dab in the middle of the park area!  And now, I am shaking my head and wondering why we didn't go sooner when Connor was smaller.  :-(   Lord knows we talked about it.

They also had a round jungle gym climber and both big kid and little kid swings.

Ramsey was pretty excited to see all of this "new stuff". 

Though it wasn't Ramsey's first time down a slide, it was his first time down a slide... by himself!  Nana Karen was at the bottom to catch him. 

After the first few times, he wanted to do it again and, when we couldn't get him back to the top fast enough, he would get a little mad!!  lol

He'd do a little "happy dance" when he got to the bottom and kept trying to crawl back to the top on his own.

I didn't think he was quite ready to do the tornado slide by himself yet, so I whirled down with him.

He was loving the swings too, giggling his butt off.   He looked down at the ground a lot; I think he was getting a fun head rush! ha!

After we walked the paved trails a while and visited with families who were fishing, we had some bubbles that needed blowing.  Ramsey thought they were pretty neat too, but didn't quite yet grasp the idea of blowing bubbles himself.

 Next Step:  We will need to purchase new frisbees (Riggs chewed the ones we had to shreds!) so that we, as a family, can all venture over to the frisbee golf park.  It's directly across from our house on the lake.  ...another thing we've talked about doing for a long time!