Spring Break 2011-Day Two

We had a fitful night. Pattie woke up several times and crawled in bed with us. Once she was asleep I would put her back in her bed. I can’t really blame her for waking up though because I was too. We had left the awning out on our trailer and the wind was blowing it around and making it crash around which would shake the trailer. Jayme finally went out and rolled it back in around 3 am. By the time the sun started to come up and the birds woke, we had Pattie, Clay and Luke in bed with us. All we needed was Raley but there would not have been room for him! It was nice to have a little snuggle time though. We scrounged around for a good breakfast and after our respective cereal, grits or oatmeal we dressed and went for a morning hike. It was a little colder than we had planned for. I had jackets for everyone but was really wishing I had brought gloves. Oh, well, nothing like exercise to warm you up!


We had planned on taking a short loop trail that would warm us up and get us ready for a long hike in the afternoon. We must have taken a wrong turn somewhere because we ended up pretty far from where we expected to be. Eventually we found our way back to the trailer. It was nice and cozy warm in there. We had some water and snacks while we looked over the map and tried to figure out what we had done wrong.

While we looked at the map, Clay decided to go out and ride his bike a little. He ended up riding in circles around the trailer and pretty soon we noticed him being shadowed by a little girl from the campsite across from us. We could see them riding close to each other, but neither one talked to the other or waved. Clay came inside and we talked about him saying “Hello” to her or asking her name. He said, “I’ll only talk to her if I can talk in Australian!” I asked him what that meant and he said, “G’Day Mate!” He wanted to me include this in my story but I told him I would only type it if he talked to her. He promised me he would and he even waved at her through the window. Later on we met her officially. Her name was Taylor and she was 6 years old.

That afternoon we loaded up all the water-backpacks and Pattie’s backpack to ride in (just in case) for our hike around Lake Meridian. It said on the map that it was 2 ½ miles so we figured Pattie would walk some and ride some as we made our way around. We wanted to stop at the overlook we had found earlier in the day during our detour so I packed some granola bars to snack on when we got there. It was a wonderful hike. We started out across the dam that formed the lake and the wind nearly blew us off our feet! It had warmed up enough though that we didn’t need the gloves we didn’t have. Pattie surprised us very much by walking the ENTIRE TIME! Although we asked her many times, she never did get in the backpack. Jayme was happy because he is the one that carries her in it; 40 pounds less load for him.

Along with the overlook spot, we found another very interesting place on the trail. We saw a tree with about 15 Turkey Buzzards roosting in it. It was a very eerie sight; like they were waiting for the scent of death to fly off to eat. As we walked on past the tree we came across what could only have been their previous roosting area. Feathers and poop covered the ground. We walked a little faster, I’ll tell you that much! I didn’t know buzzards did that. For some reason I always think of them as solitary birds.

We were pretty tired after our hike, but we had just enough energy for a quick bike ride. The boys had already headed back down to the pier at the swimming area and Pattie wanted to go too. So Jayme hooked up her trailer and got on his bike and I followed them on mine. When we got down there, we saw the bikes but could not see the boys. I got the idea to hide their bikes and then watch them come out looking for them. I’m so mean! It almost worked, but as I was going back for my bike, Clay came up and found us. We got him to come with us and then waited for Raley to come out. Unfortunately he saw us too. It would have been awesome!! Jayme grilled us some hotdogs, brats and cheddar wursts for dinner and we went to bed thinking about what the next day held in store for us.

Family pic from Meridian State Park