Yellow Breeches

Saturday was a beautiful day for a walk to the creek.  We took a road trip in the morning to Shippensburg to pick up the new to us aquarium and I wanted to go find some rocks and things to put in it!  Baylor was digging up the gardens around the deck as usual when I proposed a ride in his new wagon to go see the creek.  As we were getting closer he asked me if this is where the peepers live.  In the early spring and all summer long the peeper frogs peep all evening.  It is a wonderful sound that comes in the windows in the early spring.  I told him it was too cold for the peepers to be out and they were sleeping in the mud.  I may be wrong about that but he did not ask me to prove it or anything so I was safe. 

There is a path along the cemetery, behind the fire hall, to the creek and the old spill way.  There is a old mill at the end of town and the spill way was built to divert the creek to run the mill. Now, it is only running when the creek is overflowing.  Thankfully we could walk though it and climb over the logs that were brought in all the floods we had this spring and summer.  Baylor loved it of course! 

I showed him how to throw rocks into the water and being all boy, he loved that too. 

He found a stick and used it as a bat.  He actually did really well throwing a rock and hitting it with the stick!  Not bad coordination for a three year old whose Mommy cannot hit the side of a barn. 

It was my turn and I did not do as well as he did! 

The creek was running pretty fast and there were some puddles left in the spill way that had some ice on it.  It my have been 3/4 of an inch to an inch in the middle of the ice and we had fun throwing rocks on the ice.  Not many punched through the ice and they had to be really big.  Some would break a hole but bounce back out and land on the ice.  He could have stood there all day and covered the ice with rocks.  It never got boring for him. 

He did really well staying out of the water, which was only an issue because the water was really cold and it is a 10 minute walk for my out of shape person to walk back up the hill pulling a wagon. That would have been a really cold 10 minutes for either of us!  I am sure one day in the future, I will be dropping him and his friends off up the stream with their inner tubes and waiting for them to come home by way of the creek.

While walking home with our logs (sticks) and a ton of rocks we both collected, we took a side trip over a foot bridge to the other side of the spill way and to where the bridge is over the Yellow Breeches.  This bridge was under water twice last year and the road was closed.  That is a lot of water for a little creek! 

And on the way back to the wagon, we found a tiny bird's nest.  Baylor had me pick it up and put it on a branch so the bird could come back to it.  The magic of childhood is a wonderful thing!