Nieman Adventures: State Park Surfing, and What Really is So Hard...

We're going on week two of what Ford calls "corona vacation," and we feel like complete jerks. To say nothing of the heartbreak that is people who can't afford to stay home or drop a paycheck, and kids for whom home is not a safe place to be or who depend on schools for adequate nutrition, and travelers who are stranded far from home... we also sympathize with our similarly-situated friends who were just not prepared to juggle telework and no-notice homeschooling. It is no joke.

We have been absolutely and accidentally blessed by Seth's earlier-than-expected retirement date and Finley's November birthday, which together mean we have schedule flexibility and no standardized tests to worry about. So F+F have basically become feral. I had to work for most of the week, and Seth and kids decamped to the river most days (in their pajamas?) to fish and swim and apparently avoid all the snakes I can practically see coming out of those photos.

We did insist the hooligans pitch in around the house,

although this is how they outfitted themselves to chop onions (thanks to Grandma and her "onion goggles.")

Friday I finally got some time off and Seth was due for solo fishing time, so the kids and I set about to hit up all the state parks within my mandated 50-mile driving radius. Which, if you measure from the outer bounds of a gigantic installation, is pretty generous. I love eastern North Carolina and remembered the mysterious Carolina Bays, so we settled on Jones Lake first.

It was utter perfection on an 85 degree day, and social distancing was in full effect as we saw only a handful of other people and spent the whole day (minus snack time) in the water. I know reasonable minds can (and do) differ about whether and how far one should go during this uncertain time, but we're careful of distance (the kids yell "six feet! six feet!" and jump off the trail when they see someone coming) and believe deeply in the myriad benefits of fresh air and exercise.

We did cheat a little bit and invite friends to hit the lake with us Saturday, but it was friends we see so often they're like family, and any cross-contamination that was likely to occur between the Nieman-Ryan-Stewart crowd had likely already done so. So we went all in on the healing powers of fresh air, and held a kid biathlon at the deserted beach

before working on outdoor forts and fires.

Sunday we vowed to stick closer to home, minus Seth who was on a quest to catch these,

so F+F and I hit up Raven Rock, a local state park which was way more crowded than usual (and which subsequently closed because "people failed to maintain social distancing," which Finley herself had noted.) "Mom, what is so hard about six feet?" she asked. Amen, kid.

We fled and headed home to appreciate the fact that, if we had to be tethered to our own backyard, at least it was this backyard.

And also that someone in my family at some point gave us a badminton set, which has become a real hit.

Today I went in early so I could leave early (and Seth could continue on FishQuest 2020), and we checked in with our favorite, on-the-way-to-work state park, Carver's Creek. The never-crowded spot had nearly, according to the Ranger on duty, doubled its normal visitor numbers, and something in me was thrilled about the fact that people were getting outside. But also annoyed that our nature school-slash-Davy Crockett-reenacting was interrupted by having to jump into the woods every few minutes for large groups of people who couldn't manage six feet of distance on an eight foot trail.