As far as I can remember, the park that I visited most with my family was none other than Northwest River. It was about twenty miles away, but it was never too packed nor was it a noisy environment.



Not too far from the parking lot is well, the river itself. You could take canoes for the payment of six bucks an hour, and paddleboats at five bucks for every half hour.

The activities that my family and I shared came from the same experiences. Our games of interest were paddleball, football/catch, and velcro ball. Occasionally we would take our dogs with us, either for them to play a game of fetch or to go with us on the hiking trail. And that's where we go to next.



From here on is a trail that lasted a good hour or two for us to walk back out of. It's not easy at all to get lost, but that's how long that it would normally take for us to get out. It's because of how much we observed nature within the trail. Along the bridges that formed over the lakes in the area I would either feed the ducks or watch the fish splash out of the water. But because of how narrow the trail was we sometimes had to keep our dogs good distance from anyone that crossed our paths who also had dogs.

Just as the park connected with the hiking trail, the river did the same. At times we pointed out fishing bobbers that were seen hung over tree branches. We didn't fish here often, but believe it or not I caught my biggest fish here, a largemouth bass that was over forty inches in length. Truth to be told though, I never did get into fishing.



When not playing games in the park area, we usually went back to our car to unpack the cooler full of hotdogs, potato chips, lunchmeat sandwiches, and canned soda, then go to the shelter area to eat or meal. Depending on the number of snacks back at home, I sometimes brought my own such as fruit roll-ups and rice krispies treats. If the dogs were with us, we had their leashes tied to the legs of the chairs, but sometimes that wasn't enough. One of us had to stop enjoying our meal and hold onto their leashes while the others ate.



We did have our fair share of camping, but we didn't do it often at Northwest River. Even though we didn't have the problem of there being noise from the people during the day, we had to deal with hearing them at the latest of night time, leading us to start camping elsewhere.

To conclude, I hold a good number of childhood memories here. At the time, my neighborhood wasn't exactly the best place to play at, so I tried making a few friends at the park at any chance that I could get. There may come a day when I move back down to Virginia and check out the park after my long absence from being out of state. All in all, it was, and still is a captivating area.