One of my favorite places is at my friend’s cabin in the woods.  When I get there I can’t wait to explore.  I like to stay outside and look for creatures like lizards, bearded dragons, and squirrels.  We always end up building a fort too.  That’s where we could put the creatures that we catch.  My friend Luke found a skull to help decorate our fort. 

After we’re done exploring, we head to the store and buy worms with our dads so we can catch crawdads.  We hike down a steep mountain carrying our lunches, blankets, earth worms and fishing poles.  It takes about 30 minutes to get down to the river where we fish for crawdads. 

The best of crawdad fishing is catching one and pulling it off the hook.  I also enjoy grabbing the slimy earthworms and hooking them onto my pole.  Catching crawdads is a lot easier than fishing because you usually don’t have to wait too long to catch something.   When I feel brave, I walk across the river to a large rock where I like to stand with my fishing pole.  But I have to be careful because I could easily slip on the top of the rock and hurt myself. 

The first time I caught a crawdad, I reeled it in and the crawdad fell on the ground.  It was escaping quickly back into the water so I decided to use my fingers to pick it up.  The crawdad snapped my fingers with its sharp claws and I let go.  It zoomed back into the water.  After that, my dad taught me the right way to pick up the crawdad so I won’t get pinched next time. 

By the end of the day, I hooked about ten earthworms onto my fishing pole and caught about 15 crawdads.  The largest crawdad I caught was about 4 inches long.  I threw the smaller ones back in the creek because there wasn’t enough meat in them to eat.  We put all the crawdads in a small bucket and cooked them by putting them in a large pot filled with boiling water.  In just a few minutes, we were able to eat them.   After that, I headed back outside with Luke to do more exploring.  But it’s hard to explore in the dark.  That’s why I always bring a flashlight.  There’s nothing that can stop me from exploring, except for when my parents say, “It’s time to go to bed.  Lights out.”