Run Turkey

I was supposed to go to a friend's parent's 40th anniversary party today. I wasn't thrilled with the idea of driving all the way down there so when my mom suggested taking out the boats, I decided to do that instead. We got up this morning and she told me that my dad decided he didn't want to take the boats out. He says that The Boy doesn't like it and he wasn't hauling the boats to the river to fight with him about it. We talked about just going without but decided that it would be too hard to pull the The Boy with the tandem boat and RF paddles a whitewater boat which is impossible to pull anything with. He offered to paddle a flat water boat, but we decided that loading everything with just the 3 adults would be a huge pain. We started looking around for something else to do outside, because the weather was too nice to stay inside. Mom finally suggested Turkey Run, in Indiana. It is a lot of hiking trials, canoeing (no thank you) and horse back riding. I thought maybe we could work out horse back riding because I'm not thrilled with the hiking either. We got over there and found out that you had to be 8 and there was no doubling up so the kids were out.

We decided to hike one of the "easy" trails which ended up being a long distance away and we would have had to drive there. Instead, we hiked the trail to the "Ice Box" (formerly known as Devil's Ice Box), which is listed as "rugged/extremely rugged" Good call, right? Ms Thang has her mother's aversion to nature and was rather unpleasant for most of the time. Because of all the rain and flooding, most of the trail was muddy and every time she had to go through it, it was a huge ordeal. Finally, my mom took her shoes off, until I found glass on the trail and forced her to put her shoes back on. Mom told her to sit on the rock to put her shoes and MT said "that rock is all slimy, I'm not sitting on it" She ended up having to just hold her in one arm and put the shoes one with the other because Ms Thang refused to sit on any of the rocks because they were all "too slimy"

On the trail, we saw a baby turtle climbing up a rock and the kids stopped to watch it because it was probably the best part of the trip. We found the Ice Box (when we used to go there when I was a kid, it was down right cold in there, today it was merely cool, although the weather wasn't as hot as normal) and The Boy climbed around in there for a bit, then we turned around and hiked back. MT bitched the whole way back and I was ready to leave her in the woods by the time we got to the suspension bridge. They played by the river, skipping rocks and watching the minnows for a while. Then, we came back to the nature center and had lunch and then drove home. Not before, MT had ANOTHER melt down about having to go to the bathroom before we left.

I doubt I'll be back to Turkey Run, probably ever. Maybe when the kids are teenagers but not until they are old enough to ask to go. I like the horse back riding, but I'm sure I can find something closer when the kids get big enough for all that.