River Rise State Park

(This is from a couple weeks ago. Quarantine is perfect time to get caught up on posts!)

We had quite an adventure checking out River Rise State Park.   It's been a while since we've crossed a state park off of our list.  What's really strange is that this one is the closest one to our house and we have never visited it!  

We decided to bring a picnic lunch to start off the afternoon.  It was a gorgeous day of about 75*.  Absolutely perfect!

There aren't a whole lot of amenities at this park.  It's known for a park with lots of trails and a great place to bring horses to go on the horse trails.  Maybe one day we can do that.  It's also the place where the Santa Fe River surfaces after going underground for a bit.  Pretty cool!

So we started off on the trail.  It's quite long, so we took a pic of the map posted at the beginning of the trail and decided to do the smaller loop.

The cut off for the smaller loop didn't look travelled very well.  And after a while it was obvious it hadn't been used much in  quite a while!

We saw lots of tracks along the way.

And saw lots of trees that had fallen over the path.

After a while we weren't really sure we were even on the path anymore.

Then, we noticed them....tons of chiggers all on my Micah.  And on my Silas.  And on my Callie.  We decided we just needed to be done, find the right path, and get home and shower!  Callie and Silas stopped to take off more chiggers while Micah, Beth and I went on ahead.  Then, we heard a very loud, scary scream from my Callie....

...and my Silas holler, "Snake!!"  My Callie was about 3 feet from a rattle snake.  Oh my goodness.  We hurried over and helped her calmly back up.  She was so brave, but boy were tears flowing as she tried not to move suddenly.  Beth was awesome and is always a calm head in the bunch.  Praise the Lord for His protection!!

We finally found another marker saying that we were on the path.  Our little hike turned into quite an adventure.  We were quite thrilled to see our car and head home and shower.  Not so sure we will be back to this park.  Defintely more of a horse trail kind of park.  

So thankful for the beautiful weather, for finding our way back on the path, and for the Lord's safety!