Neighborhood Trails

When I arrived home a few days ago - I saw my oldest two boys playing the in the back yard. I realized that I needed to spend some time with them ( I have been really busy the past few months with our moving and the freshing up of our old house in preperation to sell it.)

Being young restless boys - they are always in need of some adventure and knowing that it is important for fathers to train their children and guide their natural inclinations - I was looking around for something that we could do together.

I remembered that we have a community trail that runs behind our property and the home owners association mentioned that it was cluttered and somewhat unpassable since Hurricane Gustav rolled through last summer.

I decided that we should go and search it our for ourselves. Once we got through a lot of brush and downed trees - the trail system opened up to a nice little gravel pathway.

We found a few bridges that were in need of repair but still passable.

Some parts of the trail were almost undistinguishable - and we probably would not have known where they were - except for the bridges that served as landmarkers.

You can see this bridge was lucky to be standing with this large oak laying across it. The boys crawled under the tree and I opted to jump over it. (maybe I just wanted to see if I could - but probably would have been smarter to crawl under it.)

We also found the pier (located on Bayou Manchac) that we learned of from a neighbor.

It might be nice place for fishing - however we did see a small gator swimming by while we enjoyed the view.

After we made it most of the way around the perimeter of the neighboorhood - we doubled back and made it home in time to eat supper. I imagine that this will not be our last excursion - but next time - we should bring some water and a machete.