Day 57: Happy Halloween!

A family day! Weekends without driving are really the best. We are at Curry Hammock State Park for only two nights, so this is our one full day here. It’s a small campground with a small beach area, which is nice. The beach parking lot is even marked off with cones so you can only park in every other space for social distancing.

Nicholas helped us get an early start to the day by waking up at 6:30 a.m. claiming it was fine because of daylight saving time. Wrong day, buddy, but glad to know you likely won’t let us sleep in tomorrow morning, either.

We hit the water early with a goal of completing a 5 mile loop around the nearby small islands in our kayaks. It was breezy, so it definitely took some strength and determination to get us around 3/4 of the island, thanks to the headwind.

Often the boys are really into paddling which is amazing and very helpful. Today not so much (or not at all). They did paddle when trying to bring the boats closer to each other so they could hold each other’s paddles together or toss a rope to each other, but that was about it.

The highlight of this trip was the mangrove water trail that’s only accessible at high tide. Once we hit this section it was very apparent why that was true: super narrow and shallow, but also really fun. We were able to see snails and crabs crawling up the tree branches and roots coming out of the water. We also saw some birds, including diving pelicans early on in the kayak adventure.

As soon as we were done, the the boys were all about snorkeling. After a quick lunch in the picnic shelter, including a special Halloween cookie, they were off to the water.

When putting away our kayaks, the people in the boat next to us mentioned they saw a manatee and two rays after we pulled the boats from the water. Another person told me it was manatee mating time just three weeks ago and they were everywhere in the water near the campground. Those dang manatees are hiding from me!

We now have four full face snorkels, so the whole family got to go exploring today. Nicholas is really not a fan of the seagrass, but wants to be able to touch the bottom, so he was in the really shallow areas much of the time. We were able to show Rob lots of the hermit crabs and snails that we saw yesterday, too.

Rob had some relaxing time on the blanket while the boys and I snorkeled some more. We saw many more fish, some amazing shells, and lots of hermit crabs and snails, including one very large 3″ snail.

It was a full day and we were tired, leaving before 10 a.m. and getting home just before 5 p.m. The kids had been eager to see their Halloween activity (i.e. how we were going to give them the candy they’d picked out earlier). Fortunately, I put together some scavenger hunt clues (25+) last night so the work was mostly done. Sounds like a wrapped up kind of day, right?

When looking for some chicken broth for dinner in the outside storage compartment I moved a bin, and I saw something white move. MAGGOTS! Looking more closely, the compartment was full of maggots. How did this happen?

Our boys love to collect treasures outdoors, and at home we have a “rock garden” next to the garage, outside. On the road they have chosen one of the bins as their gathering area. Acorns have been a huge hit in the collection. Well, when you leave these acorns in warm plastic Ziploc bags, they start to grow roots. Super cool. Then when you think they might rot, you open the Ziploc to let the moisture out. Then a couple weeks pass since we haven’t opened that storage compartment much (I am nauseous again just typing this). Then somehow maggots appear everywhere. One bag of acorns was still sealed and I could easily show the boys the flies and maggots inside as the reason we needed to throw every nature related item out of the bin. Mind you, these are their treasures, but I was pleasantly surprised the only resistance was for a fire poking stick that was also in there, but that also ended up going in the dumpster (taking no chances).

Needless to say the Halloween scavenger hunt was delayed, and the boys very graciously jumped on vacuuming and sweeping up the maggots. After Cooper vacuumed, I got tweezers out to go around all of the edges to pull out the ones that had fallen in the hard-to-reach areas. We are now all on “maggot watch”, as I have no idea if this is going to be a repeat event, given how many were in there and their lifecycle.

So during and after the clean up there was request for the scavenger hunt. I finally had a few deep breaths and was ready to move on with the evening. Rob took the boys for a walk while I hid the clues. When I said “be gone 30 minutes” he said that was a long time to entertain the boys. Welcome to my daily life, my friend. They took off with Cooper pulling Nicholas in the wagon and watched some kite surfers.

When they came back they were SUPER excited for the scavenger hunt. They were so good at all the clues and loved collecting the candy. They opted to put all the candy in one bag so they could share them. They were surprised when the candy from both bags easily fit in just one bag. That was their lesson on packaging for the day and how companies make it look like you are getting more than you are. The lesson I learned was to actually map out the scavenger hunt since I didn’t plan an order and forgot to put a clue in one place so we had to improvise a bit.

It is a different Halloween this year, but with both living in an RV and not trick or treating due to COVID, we skipped the costumes. The boys never really said much about not having a costume, and today they said they dressed up as Awesome Nicholas and Awesome Cooper. I will take it, even though making costumes is my annual creative outlet I really look forward to. The stars just weren’t aligned to make it a priority this year.

Not sure how she knew it, but while I was cleaning up maggots, I got a text from a neighbor. She had said a friend was cleaning up our yard. We checked the cameras and sure enough the other next door neighbor, Kristin, was busy pruning our plants, raking the leaves, and even added new plants to our front door pot. How are we so lucky to have such incredible neighbors? This was definitely the warm fuzzy I needed to end this Halloween day.

We wrapped up the night with dinner, four pieces of candy each, and finished off the Diary of a Wimpy Kid movie. The boys were pushing hard to have us adjust to the end of Daylight Saving Time tomorrow so they could enjoy two breakfasts (round 1 fried eggs, round 2 pancakes), but we held our ground and will be changing the clocks when we go to bed.