5,4,3,2,1, JUMP!

Our yearly trip to Lake Utica, an attractive yet amazingly large lake near Arnold, always excites us as much as our trip to the Santa Cruz Beach Boardwalk. Our favorite attraction, an impressive rock jutting out from the surface of the clear lake, is at the most 12 feet tall. I always feel confident to do it, but when I finish "hiking" to the top, my legs instantly turn to rubber. But I always manage to hurl myself off before I run back down.
       The other half of our group is a large family that lives nearby. We always paddle our kayaks and canoes to one of the many small uninhabited islands in the lake. For the rest of the day, we talk and eat and play in the sand, and kayak to other islands to jump off certain rocks or to swim. The island is quite round, and so we often swim or kayak around it, but this time, my papa brought his stand up paddle-board, and everyone was swarming around it.
               When the sun has gotten low in the sky, most of the wee children are asleep as we kayak back and drive away. Our final destination is huge parking lot where we order pizza and giant growlers of beer for the dads. We eat and talk and play and mainly us kids pretend we are flower queens and pick enormous bunches of flowers. Afterwards, we part ways and drive sleepily home to our warm beds.