I’ve been talking to my wife about becoming more active now that I’m losing weight. Yesterday, she told me to get a good night’s sleep because she had an activity planned for Sunday. She wanted to keep it a surprise and wouldn’t tell me what the activity was. We had been looking at the county parks catalog so I thought it might be related to us going to a park.

She told me that there would be some hiking involved so I should wear comfortable shoes. There was also some mention of a picnic. I asked her if this would be a good opportunity for me to bring my camera since I had really been itching to use it. I have not used it since January. She hesitated about the camera and then said I could bring it but there really wasn’t much to take a picture of.

I tried to figure out all weekend long where it is that she might be taking me. Every time I mentioned a park, she would say, “No, that’s not it and I’m not telling you.” I really love it when she takes the initiative to plan an activity because it takes the pressure off me and its just fun to be surprised sometimes.

True to her word, this was a local park I had never been to before. In fact, I didn’t even know it existed. We parked and went to the visitor’s center to get a map of the walking trails. We walked down one of the trails for a bit until we got hungry and then walked back to the car and retrieved the picnic basket. We had discussed taking kayaking lessons but I didn't realize it was at this park.

We found a shaded picnic table under a tree very close to the river. After eating turkey and cheese sandwiches, pickles, and watermelon, I walked around shooting some pictures. I realized that I had forgotten a lot of what I had learned because the pictures didn’t come out as nice as I would have hoped.

Walking the trail

The view from the picnic table