Hoosier Outdoor Experience and Disc Golf

Enjoying a day at the park with a picnic and disc golf

This weekend was chock full of minion goodness and experiences. First and foremost, we had a great time at the Hoosier Outdoor Experience. It is something that the Indiana Department of Natural Resources puts on every year to get Hoosiers out and interested in our public lands and resources readily available to us. For me, it was a way to introduce my kids to many different outdoor activities and see which ones they gravitate to. Little did we know that we would be picking up a new sport/hobby along the way!

One of the most important things to note about the Hoosier Outdoor Experience is that it is absolutely free. You don't pay for parking, nothing inside the park other than concessions cost you a single dime. Everything is either donated or sponsored and brought into the park for you to experience. That is a huge plus for us. As you can tell with a family of four kids, it can be expensive to do ANYTHING. Just a night out for dinner and you are dropping some cash. I cannot remember the last time I was able to walk out of McDonalds for less than twenty bucks!

Getting Ready To Play Disc Golf

So, we arrived and were bused into Fort Harrison State Park. For those of you who haven't visited this park, I highly recommend it. It is beautiful and the playgrounds for the kids are absolutely awesome. That said, we got off the bus and followed the map to our first stop... the bathroom. Yes, that is four kids for you. 

Afterwards, we went to our first booth and found out some interesting fun facts about disc golf. They had setup a course for us to play and gave us the basics. It amounted to about a minute of lessons and basically picking up our discs and go out and have fun. I am glad they didn't get all 'technical' on us and just left us to go and have fun. I found out later that they had over 1047 people play their disc golf course over the weekend. With over twenty thousand people visiting over two days, I think that is quite an accomplishment. 

Being instructed in Geo Caching

Next we spent some time learning about Geo Caching. I have done this before with the kids, but since we no longer had our handheld GPS and other things, we stopped doing it after our first adventure as a family. So, this was a good time to try it again to see if there was any interest. For us, it was fifty-fifty. It seemed that Jayelle and JJ were interested while Evie and Tayla wanted to play in the monster playground they had. Jen and I split up and went our separate ways. I was quite happy with the demonstration. The Geo Cache guys were very helpful and provided us with easy 'cheap' ways to get started geo caching without having to spend an enormous amount of money on a GPS. Good thing about iPhones is that they allow for a pretty good novice/newbie GPS absolutely free.

Riding the Trolley

Because Ft. Harrison is a large park, they provided tractor pulled trolleys to take you to different locations in the park. It provided an easy way to see everything the park had to offer without getting worn out. Sure it sounds lazy, but a trolley ride is quite fun and for little ones with little legs, they just cannot walk forever before having a melt down.  Thus our rides to different areas were a time for everyone to take a break and have fun going on the ride.

The minions make a new friend at Critter Chat

There were all sorts of things to see at the park including animals. The minions got to see several different types of snakes, a tortoise, and other creatures during the Critter Chat demonstration. It was fun to see that our kids knew the difference between poisonous and venomous animals. They were also able to answer many of the questions posed by the demonstrator about snakes. Small win for home school, check! Other things that the kids learned was about the different fish we have in our areas, and how the DNR collects fish using some old school techniques combined with new technology to effectively capture and record species.

Kids also learned how to trap! Trapping is something that I taught myself to do the year after my dad passed. It was a way for me to do something new in the outdoors that I hadn't ever tried. Well, at the Hoosier Outdoor Expo, they had great demonstrations on the different traps and even taught kids how to set them. It was a good demonstration about the humane way trapping has evolved and how easy it is to get started.

Tayla Takes Aim

Gruesome Twosome learning to shoot

Of course, I cannot forget to mention archery. That was the one thing the girls wanted to try. I was even a little excited about it myself. Due to everyone in the family reading the Hunger Games, they wanted to see if they had the mad skills of Katnis and fling arrows. Everyone got to try, even little Tayla! I was very impressed with the volunteers and instructors who safely and efficiently taught people the proper and safe way to practice archery. Each of the kids did great and were able to hit the target!

Playing a round of Disc Golf

We finished the weekend out with an afternoon of disc golf at the local park. We had a nice picnic lunch and bought our discs from a local vendor. We learned about the Hamilton Disc Golf Union and the many parks where there are free courses you can play. After buying discs for everyone, we headed off for our lunch at a very pretty park and a great beginner course.

We found the course challenging and fun. We played a non traditional game of disc golf to keep the action moving and preventing long waits between throws. Basically, it was whoever had the best throw, everyone would play their next shot from that location. That was an easy way for the kids to stay involved and not become too frustrated while teaching them the basics of throwing and the mechanics involved. After our first round, the kids wanted to play on the playground which allowed Jennifer and I time to play a round for ourselves.

After a day in the sun, we headed to my brother's house for dinner. He made vegetable soup, hot dogs, mac n' cheese, and it was enjoyed by all. We finished the evening with sitting by the fire in the back yard. We burned marsh mellows to a crisp and have fun just kicking back and relaxing. My brother's wife introduced me to Paulo Coelho, by letting me read one of her books while the kids ran and played in the yard.