Vernal Streaming Online & a Boat Race Too

When Mother Nature's spring guest, Vernal Stream, made its appearance this spring unexpectedly on February 10th, I admit we were NOT very enthusiastic for this supposed joyous occasion celebrating the arrival of spring. I, for one, was not ready to give up winter so soon. I mean--early February? Come on--give me a break--we're Minnesotans for pete's sake!!

However, a few weeks later, winter was wearing us all down. I decided to stock the fridge with carrots and cucumbers and prepared for the first annual "Cucumber Boat Races."

After an additional snow storm followed by another heat wave, the stream arrived again as expected and ran slowly on and off again on March 3-4. The high temps forecast for Friday, March 6th, indicated good potential for a Boat Race after school. But at 10am, the river was still pretty frozen...looking alot like the top of a rootbeer float.

By noon, the river had thawed and started to trickle. And by 4pm the trickle had turned into a real gusher! Amazing! We invited some friends (Sarah, Emma and West) over, made our boats and launched them off the bridge!

All the veggie boats launched without a hitch. However, our calculating river rats surmised that their crafts were too puny and graduated to sending big red and purple plastic sleds down the amazing river...and catching them before being swallowed by the giant culvert downstream...

All in all...good times and good fun for all!
























































(Note: Unfortunately, the video for this historic event accidently got deleted! So much for the Kodak moment! As it happened, the kids got so excited, they tossed their boats in the water before we could get the camera going so we didn't even get it all properly documented, anyway! So there you go.)