Adventure Monday!

We headed up to Newaygo for Adventure Monday today. I can't say that i've ever actually been to Newaygo (except for a quick stop once with Beth), though i guess i might have been. All in all, it's not a super exciting town. We had fun in the surrounding areas, though!

There are two dams - the Hardy Dam and the Croton Dam - near the actual city of Newaygo, and we started at the Hardy Dam. There's a nature trail that goes along the river there, starting at the dam, and it's a perfectly fine nature walk. There's nothing exciting about it, but it's quite a lovely area, and the trees are super tall, and there were not a lot of bugs, and honestly, the lack of bugs is what actually sold it for me. We walked and walked for about an hour and a half? Maybe two hours? Basically we walked until we got to a spot where we'd have had to walk on logs to cross a river, and i was like, "Nope! Time to turn around!" And it actually turned out to be perfect, because we got back to the car just before it started pouring.

The rain lasted just long enough to make me change the plan to include walking around downtown Newaygo, and actually...we totally could have skipped it. AND the rain quit just as we got there, but i wasn't sure if it was going to start up again, so i didn't want to just drive straight back out and have it start raining again. On the way in, though, we stopped at the cement fist heads poking up out of the grass, and that was totally worth stopping for.

So the good news is, it didn't rain again. So after walking around town for a while, we headed back out to nature. First we went to a "park" that's basically a million (Fine. 234. STILL.) steps down to a little beach. The beach was actually quite lovely. There was a little stream running through the middle of it, lined with rocks that were absolutely perfect for skipping. The river was totally smooth, and there were cool tree roots to climb around on (for the Zanes among us), and it was totally peaceful, and everyone really, really liked it. And then we had to climb back UP the steps, but we'll just skip over that part.

And then we ran to the Croton Dam, which was really cool and i would have loved to have had more time there, but Juanito needed to get home for Zumba, so we just stood up on the bridge to see it and then went home.

By the time we got home, we were all exhausted and just fell onto the couch to watch "Fantastic Beasts." All of us except Juanito, who had to go to Zumba. (And i would say, "Poor guy," except that he loves it.)