Well as of late Monday evening I have been back in Georgia accompanied by my parents.
Things have actually been quite busy since, although this wasn't planned. We've had various issues with Ben's truck, my car and our dishwasher has recently decided to play up now as well. The truck and car issues have been resolved, and we have someone coming out to look at the dishwasher this morning thankfully.
Mum and Dad seem to be recovering and adjusting to the time zone a lot quicker than I, which is a good thing. As for me, I still remain exhausted despite sleeping fairly well each night. I'll be feeling better by the end of the week I'm sure.
Our main trip so far was yesterday when we went to Reed Bingham State Park in Adel, Georgia. It's only about a 30 minute drive from Ray City so it was the perfect place to go to as we continue to acclimatise to Eastern time and Georgia weather. Although I'm pretty sure that I will never fully acclimatise to the humid climate here!
I thought I'd share some pictures with you of our trip yesterday. Being there brought back a lot of memories of when Ben and I went there before he left for deployment. So it was nice to revisit those and make new ones with the folks!
Reed Bingham is quite a large park with large lakes and a river for water recreation, a small beach and area for swimming, lots of places for picnic lunches as well as some nice walking trails through the trees and the swampy undergrowth. You can also rent some peddle boats and play mini-golf as well.
So let's get into the photos!
The lake
This is the main lake where a lot of the water recreation takes place, and is also where we had our lunch upon our arrival. It was very peaceful as there was no one around aside from a couple of guys taking their jet ski out for a bit.
Pine cone central
There was a lot of pine cones and pine needles around, which made it feel a lot like Autumn. Or Fall for my American friends and family! We also saw some really big ones, which I'll be posting a picture of further down.
The swamp
This is the main swamp that is along one of the walking trails. Sadly there were no alligators there for Mum and Dad to see. There were some pretty lilac coloured flowers though. Although that's not quite the same! I'll make sure we find some gators for them before the end of their trip here.
Twisted tree
We found this tree on one of the trails and I just had to take a picture of it, because I loved how it was twisted. Whether that's a bad thing or not I wouldn't know. But it's definitely interesting!
Chunky bark
This bark was from a different tree, although the same species I think. Mum pointed out how chunky and defined it was so I decided to get a close up.
A type of fungi
This species of fungi was growing on another tree. I'm not sure if "pretty" is the right word, but it's definitely attractive and very colourful.
Large pine cone
This was one of the large pine cones I mentioned about earlier. It's hard to get an idea of the scale aside from the size of Mum's hand. They were pretty cool to be honest.
So that's all the photos I took from yesterday. We also saw this small bird who had a really sweet song, numerous butterflies and a big swamp spider probably about 6 inches long.
Not a bad first trip out at all!
Hope you enjoyed the photos. I'm sure I'll be sharing more of what we all get up to during my parents visit.
Take care for now,
Kathryn.