Worth Going Back To

In one of our unplanned road trips, we stumbled upon a park about an hour and a half from where we live. It's a park where a famous river in that specific city is known for is located. Hubby said that he heard good things about the river before so we decided to stop by even if it's afternoon already. The park closes at 4 PM so we only had a couple of hours to explore it. The entrance fee was 2 bucks only and parking is free. It's the middle of winter so most of the plants are either in hibernation or are barely alive. But since we have mild winters here, there are some plants that have flowers in them.

As we were roaming around the park, we came across several man-made waterfalls. They're pretty small waterfalls because the water is just redirected from the river itself but they make pretty sights. I think we posed in front of every single one of them. Here are some pics of 3 of the waterfalls.

 

 

 The park is pretty big. The lawns are big enough to accommodate several people that may want to have picnics or what nots on days like the weekend we were there. But since it's winter and not many people go to parks, we could pretty much have one whole area all by ourselves.

We actually saw someone sleeping on a mat under one of the trees in one of the big lawns. I guess she went to the park to relax...and relaxed she was. LOL...

Besides the falls, the one area that we like a lot is probably the river itself. It's actually one of the first things you see when you enter the park but you have to walk around to get to it. There's a cordoned-off area where park visitors can go swimming. Since it's part of the river, we don't really know how deep it is. One swimmer ~yes, there were people swimming in it at winter time ~ said that it's about 10 feet deep from she's at which is by the river bank. Hubby said he will swim in it next time we visit.

The water is very clear that you can actually see the bottom of the river and the fish swimming in it. On the far right [I think] of this picture is the area where visitors can go canoeing if they wish to. There is a separate fee for canoe rental of course. And yes, we may go canoeing one of these weekends...probably next weekend since it's going to be a nice weather to do such a thing...that is if the weather prediction holds true.

There are several parts of the river that's been cordoned off. It is the park's way of telling the visitors as to how far they can go as far as the river is concerned. There are also some 'warning signs' about alligators being present in the river so people must practice precautionary measures just in case.

One small area that's cordoned-off is a place where visitors can sit to let fish nibble on their feet. Like this one...

 

Yep, very similar to the Fish Spa in the Japan and in some malls in the Philippines...except this is 'almost' free. Hubby said he can sit there for hours just letting those little creatures nibble on his tootsies.

Yep, we're definitely going back to this park very soon. It's a pity that we got there a bit late that day or we could have enjoyed those already. Next time, we'd probably spend the whole day in there. My father and daughter tandem can explore the place while I sleep under the shade of one of the big trees there. Good plan, eh?

Road Trippin'

One of the things that hubby told when we first met was his love for taking a drive. He said he likes just getting behind the wheel then just drive. We did that afew times here and there for the first few years we were married. Then we got busy with the baby, work and some other things. That meant not being able to go as much as we used to and we wanted to. But during the last quarter of last year, we decided to take a long drive to Georgia. We went there mainly to look at the place and some properties. But we also enjoyed the 7+ hour long drive. Just taking in the sights while on our way to our destination. That somehow fueled our appetite for doing that...driving just to sight see. From that time on, we've been driving around a lot during the weekend. It's mostly just around here. We don't have the time to go far because of work so we just stay local...for now.

So where do we go during these 'local road trips'? Nowhere in particular. What we usually do is just go out. If we have some errands to run, then we do those first. As soon as we're done with the errands, hubby will just drive. Most of the time we just stay in the car. A few of the times when we see something worth stopping for, we'd stop to take pictures. We've done that maybe a couple of times only. But not all of our trips are unplanned. We had one a few months ago where we went to this forest trail to look at some underground caves. Most of the caves are very small but there are couple that we were able to get into. The little one had fun exploring the caves. After the cave exploration, we went rough terrain driving also in the same forest. The husband did most of that himself because I wasn't very keen in going through it. I just took some videos of him trying to get over the humps and bumps on the terrain that were made just for that purpose.

Im sure we'll have more road trippin' in the days to come. Hopefully I'll be driving in one of those trips. Maybe....