Saturday on the River

Today we decided to take a little impromptu visit to the Potomac River.  Mark had the idea this morning, and since we didn’t have anything else planned, we packed up the canoe, our river stuff, and some food and set out for the river. 

We paddled up river to a small island where we could set out our blanket, the girls could play in the shallow water around the island, and Mark could fish a little.

Right away, the girls busied themselves with rocks and interesting things in the water.  Lyla loves rocks.  She gathered all the biggest rocks she could find and put them in the tire circle she found on the ground.  Nina started off looking for neat shells.

After a little looking, Nina discovered small snails in the water.  She and Lyla spent quite awhile looking for, and finding, tiny snails attached to rocks in the shallow water.

Mark spent some time fishing while the girls played.

It was a beautiful day, but it did get quite hot, so the girls took the opportunity to cool each other down!

After getting cooled off again, Nina want back to snail hunting, and Lyla returned to her favorite activity – throwing rocks.  She loves to just chuck rocks into the water – the bigger the rocks, the better.

One creature happy to see us get back into our canoe and head back down the river was this killdeer.  She is camouflaged very well, so you can click on the picture to make it bigger and see her.  She is in the very center of the photo.  The minute we arrived at the island, I figured we had come into her nest territory.  She hopped over to a few feet away from us and started squawking, bobbing her head, and basically didn’t stop squawking the entire time we were there.  We saw the area that her nest was in, so we were careful to not even go on that half of the island.  Still, she was not happy that we were there, even staying on our side of the island, and she made sure we knew it!

It ended up being a great way to spend part of the day, and all of us enjoyed the beautiful day outdoors.