Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Wells Bike Ride - The Swamp

The pictures I took during a bike ride this past week in Wells, NV. I was going up the road to Angel Lake.

The Swamp: The swamp was another favorite play area. There was a huge Weeping willow there which draped all the way down to the ground. It was a great place to imagine whatever kind of world you could make up in your mind.

The swamp was year around but it flooded in the spring and fall if it rained. We would make rafts with wood we found in the dump, or around the neighborhood. We even found wood around the railroad tracks or the truck depot. We would find old packing crates from the trucks. We made the rafts and I don't think we ever got them to float with weight on them. In many ways, we were lucky we did not drown. Safety was not our concern. We were invincible. We always had one kid on the raft in the swamp and the others were on ground laughing because the raft was trying to sink and someone was up to their knees in stinky old water.

Tadpoles, Frogs and Stink: The swamp had frogs. We would wade into the swamp and get frog eggs and watch them grow day by day and week by week. The swamp could smell very gross which meant we smelled pretty gross. We only got a both once or twice a week because we had to heat water on the stove. Personally, I hated baths because I had worked so very hard to smell like I did.

The swamp is now where the tribal police office is located. It was a pretty big swamp.

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