A Summertime Community Picnic

What's summer without the fun out-of-doors and a great picnic to boot?  Being outside is premium for me this time of year because of our cold winters.  This summer has been exceptionally hot with temperatures in the 90's exceeding twenty days and with our high humidity, that means living indoors, which feels like the winter months...bummer.
So we were so excited to go to an annual community picnic this year hosted by some friends of our family.  We've been going for over 10 years and it's a Saturday that's always a great day for us.  

This year the temperature was perfect and allowed for a great turnout as well.  Lots of people from all over our town and neighboring areas as well came for this fun event.

The picnic is hosted by a local nursery who gather in all their clients and friends to celebrate a great year together.  Their property is full of every beautiful kind of shrub and tree imaginable...

Our family group has our own mini reunion under one of the tents.

You can't have a great picnic without all the food, and everyone brings a side dish or dessert to share with everyone else.  It's a massive pot luck dinner and worth a couple of trips around the table.

The family hosting the picnic provides the meat which is pork, turkey, this year venison tacos, and beef.  It's slow roasted over an open fire pit, shredded and served.

What's a picnic without a bean salad and zuchinni?

One tent is completely devoted to folk musicians who come to play as a group for this event.  It's a wonderful backdrop of music which fits the picnic entirely.

One of our favorite parts of the picnic is the hayride which lasts a good 30 minutes.  We casually take a ride around the nursery property and some take the opportunity to enjoy sweet treats on the ride!

A perfect way to end the day!  Blessings!

Linked to Life Rearranged

Picnic at the Marina...

What do you do on a beautiful day, that doesn't cost much money and is interesting to everyone in the family?  A picnic of course!  We usually go to one of the beautiful wooded parks that we have around here. However, there is an allurement to the water that we found hard to resist that day...maybe because it was so hot, and maybe because half of us really wanted to fish.  Whatever the reasons were, we decided to head out to the marina and spend our day there and also in the adjoining state park.

Perfect view for lunch!

We made our sandwiches and wraps right on the spot. Turkey Cheddar
wraps with homemade hummus.

After a satisfying lunch, we all headed off to our respective spots.  Some to fish (caught and released, one Rock Bass!) and others to walk along the beach shore and then the walking path that borders the lake.

We also took a long hike in the woods later in the afternoon.  It began to drizzle, so the woods became an inviting place to hang out.

Found a few fun things along the way...

Lighthouse...it was trying to rain.

Yellow Tiger Swallowtail "puddling" in the sand.

My brother, who's a naturalist, says he thinks this is crown 
vetch.  It's so pretty and looked great along this fence
line...!

Being by the water is so refreshing.  It was such a nice day and a great mix of land and water.  The boats were fun to watch come in and we ended up being outdoors for many hours; getting recharged and ready for the week.  It was a pretty great week and I hope yours was great too...blessings to you all!