Roman Nose Rendezvous

Keeping with the theme of being more adventurous and spontaneous, Riley suggested that we plan a weekend trip to Roman Nose Lodge. He didn't have to ask me twice...I had a room booked less than one hour after he suggested it to me. Nothin' fancy...nothin' spectacular....but we just needed to go SOMEWHERE.....ANYWHERE!!! We pulled into the lodge around 5:00 and made ourselves at home in our room.....

We set out to explore a bit seeing as how it'd been many, many years since Riley or I had been to the park. I have some fond memories of playing at Roman Nose as a little girl. We were sad to see that the general store was closed along with the paddle boats and the putt putt course. Oh well, maybe next time...

After taking a cruise through the park we returned to the lodge for dinner. Upon pulling into the parking lot Riley hollered out "Babe! Open your door!" I pushed the door open to spot a giant tarantula right below....

 As if that wasn't startling enough without even moving the car he yelled "check this out!" and gestured toward the  driver's side where we watched this nasty guy slither toward the road.....

Snake/spider scanning was ramped up as we walked into the lodge. No more sightings of creepy critters that night. Whew. Us girls can handle a good adventure....just not an adventure with any of those 's' animals....

We had a rather active dinner that night. Active as in chasing Hallie down the hallway quite a few times while we waited for what seemed like a decade for our food to arrive at our table. I really couldn't blame the girl....once she spotted the pool and playground that's all she could think about. Lucky for her we spent the rest of the evening swimming and playing. She was sunkissed and exhausted so we retired to bed rather early for us Fannings.....

I have no recollection of when I passed out but I remember that it snuck up on me quick. Despite my expectations of Hallie waking bright and early excited at the sight of us right next to her, I couldn't have been more wrong. In fact, I think that's why she slept so late. She slept until 9:30. I'm doing the happy dance just typing that! We mosied down to breakfast with Hallie hurrying her slow moving parents...."Come on! Wet's go to bwekfast!" She inhaled her pancakes and sausage since the little stinker had skipped her dinner the night before because of all the pool excitement. With full bellies we loaded up in the car and took off to find a good place to hike and explore....

Hallie knows hydration is key

We came upon a very familiar spot before long and took the walk down the stone steps to find the prettiest little natural spring area....

Serenity

Us girls did not waste a second dilly-dallying and hopped creeped into the ice cold water....

I though she'd say "see ya" once she realized just how cold it was but it was quite the opposite reaction. She wanted to go deeper and deeper.....

This giant stick served as her pretend fishing pole....

"Where's all the fishies?"

We begged our cold-blooded companion to join us in the water but he was way too comfortable standing on the dry rock being our photog....

"Come on daddy, it's warm"

She crawled and waded and jumped and splashed and "fished" until her lips started to turn a shade of blue. I figured it was time to mosey on down to the bridge and warm up a bit. Here's more of our little fish in and out of water having a ball at the springs.....

Rehydrating....swimming in freezing water is hard work 

A few canine friends romped around with her for awhile

She would've stayed all day at that spot (and would eventually return later) if we'd have let her but alas we made our way across the bridge to the waterfall area....

Riley took her back closer to get a peek at the pretty waterfall...

I love the panorama option on my phone....the big tree roots and the green trees and the little tiny girl wading in the water all make me happy....

The further down stream we went the muddier the water got. But we didn't mind one bit....

My darling dear who was manning the camera decided to take a series of TEN shots of me bouncing around on one foot to avoid getting my feet muddy.....

Messy girl was soaking wet and covered in red dirt and in no way ready to get out of the water....

We may or may not have used some bribery to get her back to the car. No shame here. She enjoyed her promised Cheezits once back in the room. Oh and she also liked taking some goofy pictures with us while lounging around. She told me when to take the picture and decided what faces they would make.....

We took our first of what would eventually be three trips to the pool that afternoon instead of taking a nap. Girl was perfectly content sunbathing on the steps. We played some pretty interesting new games that she came up with. My favorites were the mommy fish game where I was sent to the "grocery store" at the other end of the pool where I picked up some baby fish food for my baby and the other fantastic game where we pretended to be mermaids that couldn't swim. She had me laughing nonstop!

We went back down to the springs early that evening to swim after dinner which felt perfect after a day of hiking around. This time Hallie wore her bathing suit which she liked much better than swimming in her clothes. I didn't take any photos from our second trip to the springs for two reasons...I'd already taken a billion that morning AND I was far too busy obsessively cleaning the red mud off of her new white bikini. Dumb decision to put that one on her...not sure what I was thinking there. Our super cold swim ended when we spotted a slithery creature shoot through the water. Ummm.....see ya later snake! AHHHHHHHHH!!!!

We drove into Watonga to make a run by Sonic for dinner. We had planned on having a picnic but Hal fell asleep in the car so we scarfed down our food on the way to find a fishing spot. She was more than happy to wake up once I told her we were going to be fishing. We unloaded in a nice shady spot on the bank. Riley prepped Hallie's pretty pink pole as she looked on......

"You sure you know what you're doin' there?"

Hal and I did some scanning around for snakes/bugs/birds/creatures to make sure we didn't have any visitors. It looked like the last visitor became a nice snack....

Speaking of creepy crawly creatures, Hallie just LOVED the worms Riley picked up in town....

She was baited up and ready to go. I won't even get started on how adorable these fishing pictures are to me.....they just are.....

focus

Happily waiting for the big one to swim by

Cheers to fishin'

It was precious to hear her talk about the big fish she was going to catch. All we caught was some green-ish yucky-ish stuff. We didn't have any luck in that spot (well, unless you consider seaweed lucky) so we moved a ways down to fish off the dock. Hal loved this spot!

It was relaxing by the water with a nice cool breeze. Hal decided to just let it all hang out....

Once boredom caught up to Hal she resorted to other forms of entertainment....

NO fishies but we had fun. I'm not sure what was cuter....seeing Hallie fish with her pole or seeing Riley fish with her pink pole....

Saturday night ended with the playground followed by some night swimming.....

Woosh!

"I'm da king o da world!"

We munched on snacks and swam until we were all pooped. Off to bed we went......

I guess this is a good time to mention that we enjoyed everything about our stay at the lodge BESIDES the lack of, oh how should I put this, normal channels on the tv. We had to choose between My Cat From Hell or a show about building treehouses each evening. I told Riley it was about time for us to pick up a new hobby like playing cards. The next morning we slept in again (thank you Jesus), ate some breakfast at the lodge and then packed up and headed out. 

Trying to convince me to let her swim "one mo time"

She insisted on pulling her own "soup case"

The sun and swimming finally caught up to Hal by the end of Sunday......