Saturday morning started out bright and early with St. Lucas Fun Day, and what a lot of things were going on in that town! I went to watch the first game of the day, Tee Ball. My nephew was in the game, and I was anxious to see how these games were played. Our town never had tee ball when the boys were young, so I really didn’t know how it worked. Once the game started, you knew that it was really about just letting the kids get some play time. Some of the kids were so small, that the tee ball was eye level with them and when they ran, they had to hold their helmet just to keep it on. Their next challenge? Where to run. After awhile they just put two bigger kids on each side of the players to keep them corralled to get them to the right spot. This one little boy, who I think they said was 2 1/2 hit the ball and then would go get it and gave it back to the coach. They said sometimes when he hits the ball he gets the ball and then throws it further out into the ball diamond so he has a better hit . Another thing to watch was these two twins on third base and short stop. By the looks of it, they really both wanted third base because they had their gloves off and was hitting and pushing each other around on the field. Twice I saw a bigger kid who was helping, grab them and put them back on their spots because they were fighting off on the side. I was sitting by their mom and she said the funniest thing was that my nephew got on third base in practice, only to find out that these two boys really didn’t want him there. These twins took my nephew and started to push him around and all three of them ended up on the ground wrestling. How funny! But soon the kids got hot during the game and they were done. Next up was the larger kids tournament. There was big air bouncy rides being blown up and a lot of food and other games were getting ready. After the game, I headed home to see what was on our schedule for the day.
When I got home, I really wanted to go to Backbone State Park. The weather was hot and I knew that you could go swimming there. On route to Backbone, I stopped by The World’s Largest Strawberry in Strawberry Point. The strawberry was erected in 1967 and is 15 feet high and 12 feet across. When I was taking my picture, I noticed that no one even took a second look at me. I think this strawberry has been photographed a lot!
World's Largest Strawberry in Strawberry Point, Iowa
Then to find the park. There were some roads closed by where I thought I was supposed to turn, so after a couple of trials and errors, I eventually found it. 
The drive through the park was just beautiful and the first stop was the cave. I knew I wasn’t equipped right when I met a group of younger boys all dirty and holding flashlights. Now there was no way I was going to go crawling in any cave, but I went to take a look anyway. The closer to the cave you got, you could just feel the cold air coming out. I checked it out, and then off to find more stuff.
A cave at the park
I saw a sign for an auditorium and there were cars all headed that way, so I thought I’d go that way also. When I was getting closer to it, I could see there was someone directing traffic. I thought Cool, maybe there’s something special for the day. Yea, there was… a wedding. He was asking me to park in this one spot, but I said I really just needed to get out of there. I finally found a way out and went by some guys in tuxes just wondering what I was doing. The park must be known for all the fishing in the springs that feed the lake. Everywhere you looked there were people trout fishing. With so many trees, it was really comfortable at the park and probably a good fishing day. I saw this really beautiful fence that they had built but didn’t see any reason why they would have built it. So I stopped to get a better look. It had these circle holes in the ground. I wasn’t sure why they were there, but I’m thinking maybe they raised trout for the streams? Not sure, but if you ever read the book or seen the movie ‘Holes’, this is what the area looked like.
Huge holes all around the ground
Off to find the beach. I parked the car and changed into my suit because I wasn’t sure if I was going to go swimming or not. I found out that rented kayaks (YEA!!) and took out one instead. I tried to stay away from the other canoes with the families in them, because I wanted to see what animals were hanging out by the water. This park is 2,002 acres and I knew that since it was Iowa’s first State Park since 1920, there had to be some animals in it. The first thing that I saw was some raccoons by the water getting a drink, then a small beaver was walking beside the water and disappeared into some hole by a log . Then the next really cool thing was this deer. Even though he saw me, he didn’t run. I found out later that the deer are really used to seeing people. I followed him for some time along the bank and was so close. I debated bringing my camera, but that would be the time that I probably would tip and wreck it. After following him, he met up with two other deer laying in some brush right by the water. I tried to get in front of them, but they didn’t want anything to do with that. The most bizarre thing happened to me though when I was following this deer. I was going so slow and not making any noise that the deer was letting me stay so close. But I must have made some noise because as I was going over the water it was starting to boil. Yea.. boil. I thought, please God do not let me tip now!! But after about the third spot that this happened to me, I realized it was fish stirring up the water. You could see the dirt from the bottom going in circles that would be probably from a fish. All I knew was that I was hoping it wasn’t some freak air gas release and suck me and the kayak down into the mud forever. I headed home for the day. Even though there were more people sitting out under the trees than swimming, it sure seemed everyone was having a really good time. 
Iowa's first State Park - Backbone
Later in the afternoon when I was home I looked down the road and thought it was one of our dogs running in the middle of it. I could see that our female dog also saw it by now and started to bark. So I started to yell for our male dog and soon he came standing right beside me. When I looked closer, here it was a deer running on the road. I guess it was easier than in the corn fields?
To finish out the night, we headed back to St. Lucas to see if there was anything still going on. There was music and volleyball tournaments, and still quite a few people we knew were there. After visiting for awhile, a couple of us headed back to Lawler for a wedding dance that was going on in town.