Well, this post is in the same family as Marvelous Monday but only in that it will contain five items of note. I'm adding a little twist because it's Monday and I'm still thinking fondly about Saturday afternoon. My dad took my brother and I out on the Mississippi River in his fishing boat for the first time in many years!
It was sunny and 60 degrees, the leaves were just turning yellow and I wore a sweet plaid lifejacket. Dad drove about an hour up river, we stopped for a picnic that he had packed and then turned around and drifted back to the boat landing. We had a fabulous time, even if I was in charge of spotting approaching rocks because of my seat at the front of the boat. (I'm very pleased to report that the boat and all three of us are still intact.)
My dad grew up in and on the Mississippi - we passed his old house on our route - and because my grandparents lived there when I was growing up, I did to some extent, too. When I was a kid, we went on boat rides and fished (a lot) and caught little crayfish. When he was a kid, though, it sounds like Dad was more adventurous than I was. At the tender age of 13, he assembled a homemade jetski with a piece of plywood and a little motor and used to cruise up and down the river on it! (I got a monster kick out of hearing this today in the era of hypersupervised children and helicopter parents.) Dad knows what's underneath the water's surface based on different patterns and waves. He has a veritable library of trivia and history in his mind about the stretch of the river we traversed: which patch of land used to be a horse farm, which yard used to host a speakeasy, which stumps sticking out of a channel used to hold up a bridge. I knew I'd have fun, but I learned a lot more than I expected, too.
So to celebrate Marvelous Monday, here are five highlights from our boat trip:
1) I'll lead off with my tremendous but ultimately futile efforts to get a photo of the three of us all facing forward and smiling. This is pretty typical. I'm sure we're smacking into rocks and Dad is doing some serious boat- or navigation-related work while my brother and I mug for the camera.
2) There were some sections of the river that were so shallow - I'm talking inches deep. Other parts of the river were super deep. Some shallow sections were sandy, others rocky. Some required more serious maneuvering on Dad's behalf than others. We provided moral support. Here are the shadows of my brother and I peeking over the boat at a particularly shallow section.
3) One part of the river had loads and loads of seagulls hanging out from one side of shore to the other.
4) I think Dad was happy as a clam. (Ha, ha, breaking news, finally an apt simile on Miles and Laurel.) It was so relaxing to spend an afternoon on the water.
5) See? It's that relaxing. This was my view. Feet up, head resting on the back of my lifejacket. I confess that I probably wasn't providing much navigational help at this point...but I think we were back in deep water by this point. Fingers crossed.
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