Saturday, August 18, 2007

a great adventure

Since we're between major house projects, this morning we decided to explore our new community a little more. "But Holli," you may point out, "It's your hometown, and it's small. How much could it have changed?"

Well, thanks for asking. It's been 20 years since I last lived in this town, and I'm surprised by the things that have and haven't changed. Today, all the surprises were pleasant. We decided to pump up our bike tires, hook up the trailer, and explore the relatively new Greenway Trail.


We rode through town to get to the start of the trail, then headed out. The trail is for walking, riding, and jogging, and it's really nice. It goes through all these wooded areas, and winds back and forth over the Yellow River via a series of wooden bridges. It was a cool morning, perfect for biking.

Since the morning was for the boys too, we took a detour to Centennial Park. The curly slide may well be the one I remember from being a kid, but beyond that, the play area is unrecognizable. There's a huge wooden play village. Some of the parks we went to in Chicago (like Indian Boundary Park) had these structures, but not nearly to the scale or intricacy of this one. The boys had a blast playing there for about an hour. Liam was so excited by the "big park" (as opposed to the school playground where we usually take them) that he was yelling and whooping in excitement and actually scared away the only other kid (a little girl) who was there to play. He wasn't being that wild, though; she must be easily frightened.


After the playground, we walked off to explore this little area with a small stone bridge over grass, a wooden bridge over a creek, and the most wonderful stone staircase and rocky hillside ever. Then it was back on the bikes to finish riding the loop of the bike trail as it wound along the river and through the woods. It's incredibly pretty, and there are little areas every so often with benches so you can sit and contemplate the view. Kind of randomly, at the only area we stopped at (so I could take pictures) I found that one of the benches had been donated by my family. Something old, something new.


The pictures from today turned out to be pretty good (if I do say so) and there are far too many to put in a blog post, so if you're curious, you can go here to see the full album (with captions, even!).

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

WOW! I can't believe how big the boys are getting. So sad I'm not there to see it in person.

Miss Val said...

Thanks for the link to the path and to the whole album. What a beautiful little bike path! 2 miles is perfect, the bridges and steps are cool, and the "big park" is very cool. Tyler would love this. Have to come here some day. And you're right, the pics are very nice, especially of Max on the little stone bridge!