Here's the Core; Now, Where's the Creek?
A creekless park is at the core of today's story about rappers, rockfish, and toxic algae.
Not too much of note happened this past week—although we made some killer burrito bowls for dinner Tuesday night...
Fast forward to yesterday, 11 November...
Athennia and I took a drive over to my parents' house so I could inspect some Christmas gifts I'd had shipped there over the course of the week.
While we were there, Riley texted to ask if her friend Kassie could sleep over later—so Athennia texted Kassie's mom to inquire about us stopping to pick her up on our way home; and, while we waited for her response, we decided to stop by the Neshaminy Qdoba to grab ourselves some dinner.
We got some interesting sky shots en route...
With dinner in hand, we headed back to Morrisville to get Kassie, then popped into the McDonald's drive-thru to grab dinner for the girls.
We narrowly avoided getting...
...reverse rear-ended?
...front-ended?
...by the dipshit in line in front of us—who seemed to be under the impression that, if you drive away from the pick-up window too hastily and realize you forgot something, you can just throw it in reverse and back up again despite the line of people who didn't just arrive here on Earth yesterday—and have thus already pulled forward to take your place, because that's how the drive-thru concept has always worked.
Later in the evening, Athennia and I watched four episodes of Fringe while Riley and Kassie did their thing; and then the girls came and asked us to play Uno and Phase10 with them.
So, we did.
This morning, Athennia made cinnamon rolls and pancakes for breakfast for all of us, and the girls insisted on playing Phase10 again—which we did—until it was time to drop Kassie back off at home so we could get in a hike before sundown.
More of the afternoon had by then slipped away than we would've liked; so, we settled for Core Creek Park in Langhorne—which Athennia and I have independently long since come to regard as pretty tame...
...And pretty lame.
...And curiously lacking in creeks for a park with "Creek" in its name.
...And ordinarily not on our core list of parks that seem worth going out of our way to visit.
But, we had dinner plans at my parents' house and didn't want to be neck-deep in the woods and come out covered in ticks, mud, and brambles.
Plus, Riley had never been there.
So, we took a gamble and gave Core Creek a chance. And, you know what?
It was tame.
It was lame.
Not a single creek was spotted.
But it provided us an hour or two of fun anyway :)
We spent a good two minutes (and snapped several dozen pictures) trying to capture this "rainbow cloud"...
Then we got some conflicting information about suicide...
Hell, call 'em collect: It's free for you and cheap for them.
But, wait...
You know what? I have to admit, if you want to kill yourself, this is shaping up to be a hell of a place to do it.
Toxic algae must be like catnip to ducks, because there were a ton of them hanging out here...
Once we'd snapped an obnoxious amount of pictures, we kept moving.
— the algae, probably
I wanted to get around to the "forbidden jetty"—which we did...
I did appreciate all these wannabe-seagulls hanging out on the...
...on the, uh...
...on the ver-bidden jet-bridge, despite the excess of signage and barbed wire meant to prevent anyone from accessing it.
Plus, the toxic algae will never think to look for you up there.
Adjacent to the not-actually-a-jetty is a berm with a hill leading down to the only not-actually-a-creek in this entire park...
Last time I was here, I was probably 11 years old and my mom didn't let me go down there.
So, guess what was happening today!
We made our way down and said hi to the random guy hanging out down there by himself. He said his English wasn't good; but, we gathered that he was fishing in the overflow outlet from the lake.
Interesting... A bold strategy, indeed.
Athennia asked him if he'd caught anything...
...And, instead of just saying "yes," he threw a fish at her!
There wasn't really anywhere to go from here unless we wanted to head into the woods; but, we'd put all that stress on our knees getting down here, so we tarried for a few minutes...
No signs of fish on these rocks; but, check out those strata!
I settled for snapping these two pics instead...
Then I noticed that Kitten had spotted the strata as well...
Movin' on!
The Molerat wanted to go on the playground.
Or so she thought.
But, nothing spoils one's fun like blazing down the sliding board to find a puddle of something suspicious at the bottom...
Quick, Kitten—get on the horn to Langley or something: Alert the authorities immediately so they can come shut down the playground!
Be advised, the toxic algae have taken control of the playground. This whole place is a sui-slide waiting to happen!
We've also seen no fish on the rocks so far, which leads us to believe their numbers have already been decimated.
I'm not getting any response! Houston, do you copy? Who built this thing; Verizon?!"
Welp, that was a lost cause.
Fortunately there was a second slide for Riley to enjoy on the other side of the playground; and we snapped pics of it like she was a toddler going down a slide for the first time...
...Aaaand, that was pretty much Core Creek Park.
There was a rock with cool strata in it; some guy caught an elusive "water fish"; and 50% of the sliding boards were operational.
Riveting.
Oh. Also, there was this weird phenomenon in which my shadow (on the left) looked totally normal, while Riley's (on the right) had a little stick arm, and full-on sequoias for legs...
Shortly thereafter, we were inspired to start a hip-hop collective...
Molerat Thee Stallion, Marsha Mathers, and Tres Equis (because that's one equis more than that other guy has—which officially makes me the most interesting man in the world).
Literally all we did was take turns posing like narcissistic idiots while wearing Athennia's sunglasses; and, that quickly, some squirrel ran up to us and was like, "Oh my God, you guys are the next Wu-Tang Clan! Can I have your autographs?"
A few minutes later, the collective broke up due to irreconcilable differences... which means that no one will ever hear any of the material from our debut album, Toxic Beats: Algae for Algernon.
And I never got to invite Puff Daddy to say "Yeah" and "Uh-huh" in the background throughout one of our tracks so he could put his name on it and collect royalties as though he actually did something noteworthy.
And I didn't get to feud with any West-coast rappers.
Hell, I never even got to deal any drugs.
I feel so cheated.
Even though we may never get to thank God for winning a Grammy with a song about shooting a brutha dead and slinging heroin in the backseat of an Escalade, Athennia did do a bit of work in the fine arts department...
Then we headed over to my parents' house...
Had some hot chocolate.
Then pizza for dinner.
And finally some crumb cake and ice cream for dessert.
I feel so spry and healthy!
We stayed to watch some America's Funniest Home Videos after dessert, and Riley got especially cozy...
But eventually, it was time to head home and prepare for another Monday :/