I have never been one of those folks who liked to do the same thing every day. Too much routine, too much scheduling, and too much of the same, drives me absolutely crazy. I also have learned that I sometimes need to reward myself for finishing exceptionally hard tasks or projects that were very taxing, otherwise my focus time is even worse and it takes far longer.

When I was teaching, I would always schedule long 3-day weekends at the end of the September to get through thanksgiving break, then mid-January to get through to spring break, then always had to break free on memorial day weekend to get through the rest of the year. These weekends I had to be away from the house, doing something fun, and absolutely no one expected to hear from me unless there was blood or death.

We were getting close to wrapping things up in Florida and heading to Louisiana to stage the model for our Build to Rent property, the Crest. So I knew we would have some crazy busy days and was itching to focus on something fun. Friends of mine don’t always know what to expect when I ask if they are up for an adventure, some go skydiving, others white water rafting, while others got to explore caves in all the wrong places.

This time it involved one of our Pastor’s wife. I asked if she was available for an all-day adventure, she said as long as there’s sun and food she was good, I said great. I told her where to meet me and told her to bring her swimsuit. We rented a canoe, since the kayaks were only singles and headed out to spend the day at the Wekiwa Springs State Park and river . I didn’t know that she hadn’t really done that in Florida yet, so her hubby wasn’t happy to hear that I took her out with the alligators and snakes. But like I reminded him, God gave us dominion over all the animals and if he wanted us bit, that could happen just going outside 😉

We took a look at the map, see pic, decided we wanted to get to the buffalo Tram. We asked the guides how far it was, and they responded only about 7 miles down the river, but remember you have to paddle back to turn in the canoe, so we kept that in mind. We joyously set out determined it would be a breeze. We saw whole families of turtles out sunning themselves, and yes even alligators, but they were all little, less than 4 feet long, some cool birds and plants, lots of lily pads, but no frogs. We kept a steady pace and even set a timer so we would be able to turn around and paddle back in time.

It was a glorious day, not a cloud in the sky, and we were fully enjoying ourselves and the workout for our bodies. We were only slightly discouraged when we did not make it close to the buffalo tram before having to turn around, but we remembered what they said about paddling back upstream. We did good and even got back earlier than we thought, must’ve finally developed our rhythm. Then we headed to the springs to cool off and relax before grabbing some Jamaican lunch.

We both had such a great time we almost forgot to take a picture, does that ever happen to you? Do you get so caught up in whatever the activity is that you forget to take pictures? It happens to me all the time. Well now that the fun is done, it’s back to work…Until the next adventure!