We had planned to spend the weekend in Michigan at Barb and Kevin's cottage, but there was a mix-up, and it turned out the cottage was occupied, so we found ourselves with a whole weekend with no plans. I'm sure you will be shocked (where shocked = not even mildly surprised) to know that I keep a list of relatively local places that I'm interested enough to want to visit someday, but not so interested that I MUST. GO. NOW. So I offered up a couple of choices to Mike, and he picked the Coffee Creek Watershed Preserve, which is near Indiana Dunes. He had ulterior motives, but I'll get to that in a minute.
Coffee Creek is basically a little preserved wooded area with a creek and some interesting features like bridges and boardwalks and a variety of terrain types. I really liked exploring, and the weather was pretty much perfect: sunny and on the cool side. We heard birds around us the whole time, but somehow they mostly managed to stay hidden. Not so hidden were the two deer that ran across the path right in front of us! We were all startled and impressed, but probably the deer had some kind of problem because you would think they would avoid three noisy boys at any cost unless they were rabid or something. Luckily we didn't get close enough to find out.
After we were finished exploring, we headed off to do the next thing on our checklist: find Mike's belated Father's Day gift. For a long time now, he has wanted to plant a small tree to block the view of the unsightly gas meter on the front of the house (the gas people use wi-fi now so they don't have to stomp through the flower beds to read the meter anymore), and we told him he could pick one out as his gift from me and the boys. The first nursery we visited was kind of a dud, but at the second, he found exactly what he wanted: a blue maid holly bush that will grow to be 8-10 feet high and about 5 feet wide. It's also a topiary plant, should he decide to get adventurous with his pruning.
Saturday evening we had a surprise drop-in from the Hoopers (yay! we love surprise drop-ins!), and I mentioned to Amelia that I was planning to take Liam kayaking in the morning. She was excited because she has been planning to try it, and she wanted to take Taylor too, but she didn't feel great about going out on her own for their first outing. Clearly, it was meant to be, so early Sunday morning, Liam and I picked them up and headed to Potato Creek. It was so peaceful and quiet on the water, and both Amelia and Taylor took right to it. I'm sure they'll be joining us again soon!
Sunday afternoon, Mike and Max took the park pass and went back to Potato Creek to ride the mountain bike trail. They had a fun if sweaty time until the last mile, when Max wiped out and got some scrapes. He's a tough guy, though, so he was able to finish and get back to the van for some first aid. All in all, a pretty great weekend for one that started out with a big change in plans!
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