We were needing a family vacation before school started. Some of the choices, the beach, lake trip in TX or....hmmm? Barry came up with the idea of going to the White River for some trout fishing and boating on Bull Shoals lake. So that is what we did.
The day our vacation started Barry, Cameron and Cody took an intro to scuba. Barry is all ready certified but thought the boys would enjoy it.
After the lesson and some lunch we headed for the river house that we rented.
The river was almost right out our back door. The trout fishing was fun. Sierra caught a big brown trout (no photo sorry) that we were not able to keep because it was not big enough. Hers was 18" - 19" and they have to be 21" to keep. I caught one the next day about the same size and also had to put it back. I think all in all we caught about 19 rainbow trout. Good eating!
They generate the river...meaning, sometimes they almost turn all the water flow off from the dam on certain days. We woke up on day two to hardly any water, which made the fishing even better. About noon the water started to rise again. Kind of reminded me of the ocean tide.
If you look close you can see the fish in the middle of the photos.
After Cameron and I got up early to fish we went and got Sierra and Creed.
Creed catching his first trout. He was so fun to fish with. Later we went out into the water on the other side and he said it was so cold he felt like he was going to wet his pants. It is pretty cool but it felt good with the hot weather.
This was the view from our back deck. Not too bad.
After a change of close we drove about 15 minutes to the top of the dam, Bull Shoals lake and took the kids swimming. The water was much warmer. Funny how that works.
Sierra did not want to be by Cody's armpit hair... silly girl. He was just trying to put his arm around her for the photo. LOL
Creed was having a hard time paying attention for a kid photo and he got in trouble. Not sure which photo would have been better. Him not looking or going under the water or this, with the sad face.
We fished some more that night and a little the next morning. We packed up and then headed for Bull Shoals lake again where we rented a boat and a tube. Barry did water ski for one round but I was driving the boat so no photos for him.
Sierra kept saying this was the best part of the trip.
We stopped for a little lunch break and some bluff fun.
So I thought, boy the boys look really good in these photos... hmmm. Wait, they don't have those great big ugly life jackets on. We just got done swimming and the boys just jumped onto the tube and away we went. About the time they crashed we all realized we had forgotten something. Oops. Cameron said he thought, "Man, this is kind of hard to swim." Ugh...at least all turned out okay, right?
It was a great vacation. I think I could live on the White River. It was so peaceful and pretty.
The great thing about this vacation is it only took us about 1 1/2 hrs to drive to it. Sometimes you just need to look in your own backyard for little treasures. I am sure we will go back.
