Gorgeous October Day at Head of the Schuylkill

Our oldest daughter, Anna, rows Crew for Mount Saint Joseph's Academy, or the Mount.  Today, was the day she raced at the Head of the Schuylkill.   When I dropped Anna off this morning, the sight of all those boats on the river with the trees different colors, was gorgeous, so I said I thought we should all go down and watch her race.     To be honest, we haven't all gone to many of her races on the Schuylkill since she was a freshman, for lots of reasons, one of which is that there are no toilets along the Schuylkill, and there are no toilets, and there are no toilets...you get it?  Also, I'm not a big fan of head races, which means that the boats just keep coming...they Well, now that most of mine are able to control themselves a little, we decided we could all go.

I couldn't get a spot near the Art Museum, but I found this gorgeous little neighborhood near 28th and Brown that you could park for free.  You cross over a tiny bridge, and you are right at the boat houses...it saves at least 30 minutes.

You then cross through this little wooded area, and come out to this path....apparently the neighborhood uses this path a lot.

Anna was scheduled to race at 2, and we arrived around 1:45.    Instead of hanging out where we usually hang out by the grandstands, which is really in the middle of the race, this time we parked near the boathouses, near the Art Museum, and walked down to the finish line.   Chris and Lily decided to go biking afterwards, and Lily got used to the traffic on Kelly Drive right away:

As we were walking up, we ran into some people from La Salle College High School, where my son just graduated from in May.  I just took this picture to show to Jack:

It became apparent that they were really behind schedule, so we had/got to wait for an hour watching all these rowers.   We didn't mind waiting...look at how gorgeous the area was:

  Honestly, other than Jack not being here, it was just great...beautiful weather, getting exercise on the river with our children (Anna is waiting to race on one of the boats).

Chris and Lily found a spot by the river right away:

Chris, Timmy, Matthew, and Lily:

Here are some of the rowers--this looks pretty cool with literally hundreds of boats going constantly:  

Finally, the main attraction---this is Anna's boat going down--she is the 5 Seat, which means she is the 5th girl from the coxswain, or 4th from the left:

This is them crossing the finish line:

Anna's boat did really well (the Mount always does well), and they passed several boats on the way down, so they were happy!!   I'm so glad we went...we were thinking of staying home and raking leaves!