Yesterday’s sign was not only a country throwback reminder to the days of the smalltown shop that would close during part of the day and go fishing — it was an accurate description of my whereabouts.
We hit the nearby Kentucky Game Park with another family for some fishing, a picnic and whatever else the kids wanted to do there. We only planned a few hours, leaving at 10:30a and expecting to leave around 1p or 2p. We didn’t leave there until 5p. Needless to say, we all were having fun.
I spent some serious time teaching all three of my kids to fish. My son has a NASCAR Dale Earnhardt Jr. pole (mommy’s car) that got him going but his attention span waned as someone discovered a cache of crawdads at the other lake. My middle daughter expanded on her fishing skills. She has become quite the caster with her little Barbie fishing pole (reviewed here by Field and Stream — http://www.fieldandstream.com/fieldstream/fishing/article/0,13199,1060455,00.html –) and completely outfished her old man with a more serious rod and reel. Maybe I should have gotten that NASCAR #24 Jeff Gordon rod my son passed over.
We all bounced back and forth between fishing, relaxing, eating our picnic lunch, more fishing, exploring, more relaxing and again more fishing. The day was a perfect 81F degrees with little humidity and there was lots of shade around. It was a nice change from the hot and humid of late and we took full advantage of it.
Tired and spent from a hard day of fishing and relaxing, we headed home and 2 out of 3 of mine knocked out for the ride home. Upon arriving home we had to get ready for our neighbor’s annual 4th of July Saturday bash. These were neighbors that joined us last week for my son’s party. There were well over 100 people there. They are both from large families (he is one of 5 and she is one of 10), he owns a landscaping business and she is a local teacher. This allowed us to expand our social network and meet some more really nice folk.
At the end of the evening after it had fallen dark (around 9:45p here in Kentucky), they lit off a great 15 minute firework show. While quite a few fireworks are legal here in Kentucky — they even sell them at WalMart — anything that is air launched or explodes is illegal. However both our north and south neighbors of Indiana and Tennessee sell whatever you want. That is where my neighbor got his collection a week or so ago and proceeded to entertain us all with some great mortar launched shells. Multi-coloreds, patterns, explosions and reports. It made for a wonderful time and the kids loved it. We had a front row seat with no traffic to fight on the way home. This will be something to look forward to each year.
After we got home just before 11p, we put the kids to bed and I turned on the TV in hopes of catching the last few laps of the NASCAR race. Somebody was smiling upon me because there was a rain delay and they were on lap 11 with 2 laps left before the restart. Woohoo! I didn’t miss much. I grabbed some chips n’ salsa along with some iced tea and lemonade and made myself comfortable. My son wandered down and because he had napped on the way home from fishing, he would be up for a while. So I sat him in my lap and we did some father/son bonding.
What a great, eventful, satisfying, relaxing day!
…..Dan at aslowerpace dot net
