Creek Weekend

For my summer vacation this year I went back to Springfield, MO for our Annual Creek Weekend on the Timson side of my family! We had a great time as usual. I went a few days early to spend some time with my friend Tony before the event. My vacation started with Tony and I taking an Arkansas excursion as soon as I arrived from Knoxville. After a 10 hour drive from Knoxville Tony met us at my parents house in Springfield and we unloaded my stuff and headed to Mountain View, AR to Joe's Lodge - another 4 hours in the car. The next day we went for a mountain bike ride and I realize how out of shape I was. I fell a few times. It was a little rough but we made it out alive surprisingly. The following day we rented a boat from a grizzly fellow at the dock. Neither of us had any boat driving experience so it was quite the experience! Tony wrecked a couple times being the first driver of the boat, including slamming the boat into the dock which was quite entertaining. I had better luck because I had the benefit of watching Tony's unfortunate mishaps but hey - Mr. Grizzly man said the only way to learn was to wreck it few times - an interesting policy I thought. We caught absolutely nothing - which sucked - but we had fun none the less. We I left early Saturday morning (June 19) to get back in time for me to jump in the car again to drive the 2 hours to get to the official Creek Weekend festival! It started out interesting enough when the Park Ranger came in to throw down on us for being illegally parked. My Gramps had to throw down and tell him who he was and the guy was just happy to finally meet the land owner. I thought for a second he was going to haul my Grampa away in cuffs but instead they exchanged info and it worked out well. All the great-grand kids had a good time fishing and playing in the creek while us lazy adults had fun sitting in the shade and catching up. The next day we went to town (Salem, MO - which meets the definition of town - less than 15,000 people) and had the town pool to ourselves. My Grandmother use to teach swimming lessons there so she still has connections! My cousin Joe challenged us all to a swimming relay race - him versus all the adults. It was close but we adults prevailed, however we only had to do 2 laps each to his 30 or so. Then we cooked out and went on our separate ways. We took my 2 year old nephew Aiden back with us to Springfield where he spent the week with mom and I. We went to the zoo and the public farm - it's amazing the excursions and kindergarten teacher like my mom knows about. We had good times. I flew back to Knoxville for the last haul of work at UT before I will leave for my Bangkok adventure.