On Sunday afternoon, a few of my friends and I took our nearly annual cabin excursion to a state park located about 20 minutes from the Omaha metro area. We did a little exploring this year. A couple of us climbed an observation tower and the view was worth the climb, even if I was out of breath by the time I reached the top. Here's what I saw:
It was super windy out (40 mph), which caused the tower to sway quite a bit at the top, so I hung on to the railing for dear life as a friend snapped this photo:
After we checked in to the cabin, we explored a little more. This is the view from maybe 50 or 75 feet behind the cabin we stayed in:
Then it was time for fire and food:
We found this stuck in the tree you see in the photo above and it didn't freak us out in the least:
After we ate, we got a nice fire going in the fireplace and then played a few board games. Before we knew it, the night was gone. I got up the next morning, hoping to spot a few deer. Sure enough I saw several. Here's a picture of one of them, who seemed just as intrigued by me as I was by him or her:
After I got home and downloaded all of the pictures and videos I shot, I compared them to our last cabin trip. Twenty months had passed since our last trip – which all of us decided was too long between visits. The pictures from the previous trip looked similar, with the exception of an inch or two of snow that was on the ground at the time.
Even though these trips don't happen frequently enough, they are still clear markers of time for us. They feel like chapter titles in our lives – more opportunities to say, "Hey, do you remember when … ?"
