My rapidly fraying rope

Last month (before school started) we wanted to get one last hurrah day trip in for the kids. So, Michelle and I packed up all the munchkins in one car (that's 7 of them), grabbed a picnic lunch at Wal Mart and hit the road to Yuba Lake. After a half hour of driving and a lot of fighting in the back seat, we arrived at the lake to find the water level so high, that it had covered the beach area and it was so windy that the kids had sand in their eyes immediately. So, we packed back up and drove north again to try to find another water source for the kids to play in. There is a reservoir in Mona, that we could see from the freeway, but try as we might, we could not get to it because it was surrounded by farmland. By this point we were pretty desperate, hungry, annoyed at kids, and out of gas. We stopped at The Young Living Farm for a potty break and got some advice to go down the road to Burriston Ponds. So, that's what we did. Took us a while to find it, but we did! The kids spent the afternoon swinging into the water from a rope swing. It was very nice, until we took out the picnic and were swarmed by more flies than we had ever seen combined! We took half of them home with us in the car too. That was fun. Anyway. That was our adventure. We survived. Barely. And we didn't even run out of gas. Yay.