Lovely McDaniel Life: Happy 233rd Birthday America!

We spent July 4th hanging out with Pappa and Granny in Pine Prairie (P^2). While most of our trips to P^2 are the ultimate definition of relaxation I had something else in mind... During college I went with a group of friends on a canoe trip down the Ouiska (Whiskey) Chitto River and had an awesome time. I did a google search and realized we put our canoes in the water about 45 minutes away from P^2! I had to take Robby and this was the perfect 3-day weekend:)

We were pretty sure the river would just be PACKED with July 4th celebrators, but to make things a little more interesting we decided to bring the pups. We knew this idea had a very high probability of being a COMPLETE disaster. After a lot of back and forth we decided to try it!

Haribo and Maple prepping for the trip...

Robby was one of the best rowers on the river!

Swim break!

Maple standing guard... you never know.

Robby and the girls on the beach (sandbar).

Obstacle #1

Obstacle #2

According to the people who rented us the canoe, a guy usually cuts all of the fallen trees and removes them from the river, but he didn't show this year... no biggie!

Haribo RELAXING... out of all of the things I thought the girls would do during our trip this was the LAST on my list! Good pup:)

Haribo & Maple making sure I am going the right way.

Our mascot! He was with us for most of the trip... until he decided he wanted to hang out on my stuff then I threw him overboard.

Final stretch! Isn't it beautiful!

We had a couple of pooped pups.

We started our trip around 8:15, so we could get a good early start. We started with about 5 other canoes, but they all stopped at the 1st or 2nd beach to start celebrating America's Birthday:) We passed them and didn't see ANYONE else the entire time... well there were a few campers later down the river, but we were the only ones on the river. It is such a beautiful river with a gorgeous white sandy beach at every curve. We saw a ton of wildlife - baby armadillo, the mascot, water moccasin, lots of fish, turtles, a wasp carrying a HUGE dead spider, and probably more, but those are the ones that really stick in my mind!

We also talked to this one lady (well, she was yelling at us from a sandbar as we rowed by) who was really celebrating America's birthday. She told us Maple should be named Cocoa and Robby replied with, "Yeah, well you're close... it's Maple." She thought that was great, "Maple syrup and the other one (Haribo) can be Waffles... Maple syrup and Waffles! It's okay if you already have names for them... You can change them!" Haha, cracked us up!

We were in shock at how well the pups did. Maple only jumped out twice and both times we were stuck on the sandbars:)

We did lots of eating to make up for the energy we used during the trip. Granny helped me make some of the best brownies in the world and Robby grilled some delicious pork steaks for us. Granny spoiled us with a smothered chicken lunch before we left for Houston... delish!

We also brought the shotgun and did a little skeet shooting while we were there. We went through the safety rules and how to load the gun first. Then we started shooting. The first couple of tries were rough, but then we started busting them out of the sky. We thought we were pros until we went back on Sunday. We were not pros. There was a lot more missing than hitting going on, but we had fun and took some pictures.