The Eighth Day: Pumpkins!

It's the Eighth Day of Halloween and this weekend we started carving pumpkins for The Great Pumpkin Project (you can read about it here and here.)  I wanted to start placing our pumpkins around town with a bang so we invited a few friends over to carve some pumpkins and then float them down the Windsor Locks Canal- a state park with a 4.5 walking trail along the canal that sits next to the Connecticut River.

Windsor Locks Canal

First let me say that it's always more fun to carve pumpkins with friends, so start there. 

We scooped out the guts and tried to make them as light weight as possible so that they would float. Next we put them in a tub of water to see how low they would sit before we carved any details. Most of our pumpkins sat pretty low in the water so carving a face was not going to work. The other problem was they didn't always want to float with the top side up! One pumpkin insisted on floating upside down so that one had to be saved for another place.

Once our pumpkins were carved we headed to the canal. The canal walk closes at sunset so we arrived around 4pm. It wasn't dark enough to light candles in them and plus, our lighter suddenly wouldn't work- spirits protesting candles? We gingerly walked down the steep embankment and set our pumpkins in the water.

They looked so happy drifting down the canal! Ok, maybe that was just me projecting my happiness, but still it was pretty cool.

We stayed for a few minutes watching there very slow progress and headed to a local brewery to have a celebration beer. It was a perfect launch and a perfect day.

But the story doesn't end there. The next morning my husband jumped out of bed and said "Let's go find the pumpkins!" We grabbed some coffee and headed to the parking lot at the south end of the trail. We figure we'd walk about 15 minutes and eventually find them. Well, we walked, and walked, and walked, and walked. It was a gorgeous day and the trail was beautiful, so we kept walking. 

About 200 yards from where we dropped the pumpkins into the canal we found them! We were so happy we started jumping up and down. We definitely got some strange looks.

They had gotten caught on leaves and branches and were just bobbing in the water. I still think there is a chance that they can make it down the canal. All they need is one duck to give them a little push. It could happen! 

Once we stopped congratulating ourselves for finding the pumpkins, we realized it was another 4 miles back to our car. I came to the conclusion that it would be faster to walk about another 1.5 miles from the north end of the trail to our house and get the other car. Our 15 minutes walked turned into a 2.5 hour hike, but it was worth every minute. We already have plans for next year.