Daytripping, or The Cemetery Story

One day when I was 13 or 14 or so, a couple of my friends proposed we ride our bikes to an old cemetery they knew of.

It was a dark, gray afternoon near Halloween, and the three of us came across a 150-year old headstone engraved with what seemed to be a warning so ominous that we hopped back on our bikes and got out of there in a big hurry.

(Or so I remembered. I'm not positive about the foreboding weather, but it seems appropriate. And we actually may have misread the sentiment on that weather-worn headstone.)

When I got older, I looked for the cemetery a couple of times, but couldn't find it. It wasn't until very recently that I found out the road it was on had been re-routed and renamed somehow. And lo and behold, by the miracle of Google, I found the cemetery. And on the way home from my parent's house one day, I took my daughters to it.

They didn't seem too creeped out at the time, ignoring the No Trespassing sign on the iron fence to study cracked and fallen grave markers looking for one that contained some type of curse (we didn't find it, by the way). BUT when they were relating the story during dinner, they had nervous little smiles on their faces that seemed to say, "Maybe we could come to work with you every day for the rest of the summer, Dad."

"You don't take kids on day trips to cemeteries!" my husband said.

"It wasn't a day trip," I argued. "It was a side trip. It was an Incidental Historical Excursion."

Shortly thereafter, our daughters began suggesting a more wholesome-type family outing to a park where my husband had taken them several times before. They said I'd have fun, even if there was no cemetery there.

Which finally brings me to the picture that accompanies this post. Is this a picture of Jurassic Park? No, it's Duke Island Park in Bridgewater Township, NJ.

Spending the warm, sunny afternoon here on August 24, I marveled at what a fun, relaxing time can be had (for free!) in such gorgeous natural surroundings right in our own backyard (figuratively, I mean. It's actually about a 20-minute drive from our house).

Amidst much picture taking, we had a picnic lunch, played Frisbee, and walked the impossibly beautiful trail along the canal that leads to a small, rocky beach on the banks of the Raritan River -- the same river that flooded disastrously just several days later during Hurricane Irene.

This is something I would definitely like to do again. Just imagine if we could find a park near a graveyard...