The Importance of Getting Outdoors

I often get frustrated with the amount of time children (mine included) spend on video games.  I hope today helps remind my youngest how much outdoor fun can be had if they are willing to get outside.

The afternoon started with two rounds of disc golf:

After two fun rounds of disc golf, one of those rare, weird, awesome moments happened.  As we were walking back to the truck, I tossed one of my discs towards a basket and a squirrel ran out, inspected the disc and ran away.  I told Carson about it and I threw the disc close to him again and he did the same thing.  Carson was laughing as was I.  The squirrel was farther away the last time so I tossed it one more time.  This time, after running over to the disc, he flipped the disc up, had it in his mouth and tried to make off with it.  It's too bad I didn't record this, but it will be a memory that Carson and I will always have. 

After a trip to McDonalds for a Carmel Mocha and a Frappe - I'll leave it to your imagination as to who ordered what - we went out to Mulberry Point on the Nebraska side to do a little hiking.  We realized that the trail was probably a little too muddy to traverse, so we decided to come back into town and go to our "special spot" along the Vermillion River.  Not before the obligatory photo though.

 Our "special spot" is a spot that all of the kids and I used to go to when we'd bike around Vermillion.  Carson and I sat on the banks of the river, enjoying the extreme calm of the day as the sun was starting to set.  We were playing the game of  "that looks like a ...." when Carson looked up and noticed something in the tree across the river.  Thinking it was another form to identify, it became evident that the form, which had been there for quite some time, was actually a Bald Eagle.  Unfortunately my phone camera only has 4x zoom, but we enjoyed watching it turn it's head and sit in the tree as majestic as you can imagine.

Our conversations today went from video games early to one of camping, fishing, vacations for the summer.  All because we simply got out the door.  Yeah outdoors!