our resolution

I haven't mentioned new year's resolutions yet, have I? It's not because we don't have any. Actually, I personally have a whole list of them, including finishing repairing and painting/sealing the basement walls (this has turned into a two-year's resolution) and cutting up the fruits/vegetables as soon as we get home from the grocery store because otherwise we tend to let them go bad before we get around to it. But the biggest resolution of all is one I made for all of us: visit all of the state parks in Indiana this year. Ambitious, aren't I?

To help us on our quest, Barb and Kevin gave us a very generous Christmas gift: a state parks pass, along with a subscription to the official state parks magazine AND a gift card toward a stay at one of the state park inns. We were pretty excited to get started off on the right foot, so January 1 we set off to take part in a "First Day Hike," a program at all the state parks to encourage people to go for a hike the first day of the year. What a disaster! First we went to Tippecanoe River State Park, only to find that the trails were all closed because a big storm had knocked down a zillion branches. Undaunted, we went for our backup plan, French Park (a county park, so it wouldn't count toward our goal, but we wanted to see it anyway) but that, too, was inexplicably closed. So then we went to the unfortunately named Weenie Time drive-in restaurant for lunch (because really, how could we pass that up?) in lovely Peru, Indiana, and plotted our next move over burgers and dogs. We decided to try one last place, Frances Slocum State Recreation Area in Wabash. Google led us on a merry chase on dirt roads that bisected cornfields, and eventually we found the place ... only it was flooded, so all the trails were closed. HIKE FAIL.

Anyway. Liam had a friend spend the night last night, and Henry was feeling a little left out of their big boy activities, so I decided that since yesterday's beach trip was such fun, we should try something similar. So Henry and I dragged ourselves out of bed at dark o'clock this morning and went to Potato Creek State Park to watch the sunrise. And yes, we remembered snow pants this time! Henry had a blast running up and down the little beach, and was totally shocked when I let him go out on the ice (there were quite a few people ice fishing, so I felt pretty confident). What a thrill for him!

So what do you think? Does this count as our first official state park visit? Or do all five of us have to be there? I think that either way is fine because Potato Creek is closest to our house, so we are sure to go there again before the year is out. According to the first issue of our magazine, there are 25 state parks and 8 state lakes. I think we're going to at least go to all the parks; we'll see how many lakes we can fit in along the way. Get ready, Indiana!