Monday, September 19, 2011

Hoosier Outdoor Experience

This weekend we went to the Hoosier Outdoor Experience in Indianapolis. (We like to throw the word "hoosier" on things here in Indiana to make it sound cooler.) It was this big outdoor event at a state park where we got to try a lot of cool outdoorsy things.

Last week had some really cold, cloudy/rainy days. We went to 3 outdoor activities 3 days in a row and I was freezing at all of them. So this time I thought I'd be smart; we wore longs sleeves to Indianapolis and brought 2 jackets for each person. I was not going to be cold all day this time!

On the drive there, Dallin thought it would be really fun to pile ALL the jackets on his lap.

Of course, it was a beautiful, sunny 75 degree day. I was getting hot in my long sleeve shirt and Dallin and I are both sporting some spectacular sunburns.

We met up with some friends there and took turns babysitting the kids (they have a baby) while the other couple did non-baby friendly stuff, like canoeing.

We got to try shotgun shooting.
Don't mess with this pregnant lady, she knows how to shoot a shotgun.
I was much better with archery than the shotgun. Two of my three arrows hit pretty close to the middle of the target. The instructor told me I have a natural instinct for aiming with a bow. I also did pretty well with bowfishing (shooting a fish with an arrow attached to a line rather than using a fishing pole). I was the only one in our group to hit the (fake) fish and have the arrow stick. I know, I'm pretty awesome.

Dallin loved being outside all day surrounded by people. And he liked riding the tram around the park.
He spent all day working on that apple and ate more than half of it!

We played frisbee golf and Mckay beat us all miserably at that.

We saw that there was a caving demonstration, and we thought that would be really cool. That was until we realized their "cave" was just a huge black trash bag you could walk into with a flashlight. And a black bag sitting in direct sunlight all day is very much the opposite of the cold cave interior you would expect.
But Dallin had a blast in the "cave."

We tried venison jerky, saw some birds of prey, did A LOT of walking, and discovered that between us 4 adults, we were all pretty skilled with at least one weapon. I'm sure that will come in handy someday.

6 comments:

Julie Knight said...

Sheri you look awesome with that shotgun! Don't mess with a Hoosier prego girl! Kudos to Dwalaburton on eating the apple.

neil said...

That sounds like way more fun than we have in Arizona. Nothing around here is free and the hippies are opposed to weapons of all sorts (especially the atlatl). I hope you tried the gold panning, snowmobiling, and flint knapping.

Alan C said...

Good job on the weapons skills. I am very impressed that you were able to hit the fish while bow fishing. You are amazing.

Katie said...

How did I miss this post? I think that's awesome that you were so good with the bow. Good job!

Karen C. said...

Hooray for all the weapon skills. I know who to call if I need to have anyone "knocked off" (just kidding...)
This sounds like a really fun event. I'm glad it was a warm day and you didn't have to freeze!

Karen C. said...

I guessed its supposed to be "bumped off" isn't it? See, I'm not very good at this sort of thing. If I really tried to hire anyone to bump somebody off, the guy would probably laugh so hard at me that I would just have to slink away in embarrassment. Sheesh!