Finding Adventure Around Us -

It’s rained here in STL every day for what feels like weeks. In between the rain I try to get the kids outside. Sometimes everyone is happy. And then some times one kid or all, are not. I try to be the fun mom. Sometimes it backfires on me.

Today, it rained yet again! Our backyard is incredibly muddy. You hear squish squolch as you walk around. My plants are drowning. My deck hasn’t dried out in weeks. The rivers are over flowing and we keep getting flash flood warnings.

Don’t try too hard

Despite all the flash flood warning, I was determined to get out and enjoy the outdoors. I took the kids on their favorite trail. We mainly wanted to see if there was any water in the swampy areas at the beginning of this trail. There sure was! We get down the really fun rocky hill to make our way to the trail head…only to find it under water. The trail was gone… you couldn’t even see which way it went. Well… off we went to find another adventure.

So we left that trail to go hike another trail in the same park. This trail climbed a tiny hill/mountain. We started at the bottom. I knew if there wasn’t any sitting water there then the rest of the hike would be fine. We get 20 minutes in and the kids were sweating and miserable. We still had about 35 more minutes to go. The hike took a really long time.

It was so hot and humid. The boys had sweat dripping from their heads. My daughter and I were both super sweaty and our shirts sticking to us with sweat dripping down our necks. It was miserable. There was a lot of tears this trip. The super weird thing was when we left the house it was about 72. After we got home and had lunch I checked the temp. It was 89 with a feels like temp of 101. That is insane. No wonder we were so miserable. I was trying too hard to make the adventure work. Don’t make that mistake… no one will be happy.

Play into the weather

Since I knew that convincing the kids to go on another hike was out of the question, giving the last hike was boarder line traumtizing. I needed to find another fun activity to do outside.

I was struggling because it was so muddy and wet everywhere! Then it hit me, let’s go see the rivers that are overflowing! We knew the Missouri river was overflowing because of the trail yesterday was impassable. I asked my kids if they wanted to go on an adventure to go find overflowing creeks and rivers…. they were super excited.

We are getting in the car and my middle kiddo said “Mom lets go check out Indian Camp Creek. Dad said it’s flooded.” Great!

As we were driving he was retelling the rest of us the news story that my husband had read him. He even said that the entrance was closed at one time. When we got there the entrance was no longer closed and we were able to drive in. Once we drove over the bridge of the creek we were stunned. The creek was a raging river! We parked and got out in the rain to look at the fast moving flooded creek.

We were there about 15 minutes. It was raining…still. The kids were finding sticks and throwing them in the creek to watch them disappear quickly with the current. They were in amazement on how the creek had changed from a small creek that hardy had any movement to a raging river. The creek was usually about 6 inches to about 3 feet deep in the middle of the creek. Today the river was overflowing onto the bank, into the trees and covering most of the dirt trail leading down to the creek.

We saw a fisherman there with his cast net trying to catch bait… or fish… or crawdads… or whatever fishermen try to catch with a net. They loved every bit of it. As we were leaving they gushed with excitement on what they saw. No one had mentioned a word about how wet they were from the rain we were just playing in. Finding adventure when the weather goes bad, is possible.

Look in unexpected places

We went home, ate lunch and left again looking for another over flowing creek. This next creek must dump into a lake because it wasn’t nearly as flooded as the last and wasn’t moving as quickly. There was signs that there was rushing water. Trees knocked down, grass/weeds/flowers laying flat all in the same direction and water lines along the bank and trees.

As we continued on our adventure, there were more signs of flooding. There was large pieces of pavement that that was scattered around. It appears to have been washed away by the raging waters. We were finding adventure all around us. We explored this park for a while then went home. Finding adventure can also be in unexpected places.