little outing, lots of fun
Yesterday I had to buy new strings for my guitar. I could have gotten them from Amazon, but there's an actual guitar store in Lexington that seems better, and it also sounded much more interesting to the boys. So we hopped in the car and headed that way, with a vague plan to take a walk somewhere afterwards and be home by lunch. As it happened the store didn't open until 11, so we had to walk first and, rather than driving to somewhere interesting, just walk from a little strip mall in East Lexington and see what we could find. We found some things!
surprise water
We started off on the bike path heading towards Arlington, but quickly left it for a little path along Mill Brook. Before we knew it, we were on the shores of the mighty Arlington Reservoir. The boys have been there before, but not so recently that they remembered it—and none of us had ever seen it so full of wildfowl! Plenty of ducks and geese and, most impressively, over a dozen swans. There was also a new path through a wildlife planting area and then, when we reached the beach over on the other side, a new playground. And not a bad one either! After we waded a bit all four of us spent a happy half hour playing on the various bits of (mostly wooden!) equipment. So much so that it was closer to noon when we finally pulled ourselves away (and we could have stayed even longer if I hadn't been vaguely worried about having left the car in a store parking lot...).
It was a fun outing, just like the ones we used to do when the kids were younger and I didn't feel the need to make big adventurous plans. Harvey certainly felt that way too, and as we walked back to the car he was thinking that it was the sort of thing we could be doing more of. Sounds good to me!