After getting to sleep super late the night before, Cale and I got up around 7:45am Saturday morning. We ate some breakfast in the room (mini donuts) and drove to Centerpoint Trailhead. The plan was to hike 5.9 miles round trip to Goat Trail to see the incredible view from 500 feet above the Buffalo National River. Well… we missed the turn onto Goat Trail and ended up taking a 2.5 mile detour.

This detour ended up being a huge blessing. Cale veered off the path at one point when he saw the river was nearby. We hiked down and found a great spot to sit and hang out for about an hour. We talked, listened to music, and had a snack before heading back for the trail.

After about 90 minutes of trying to find the Goat Trail, we came across a beautiful rock beach. Cale decided that he wanted to climb the bluff and find a spot to jump off into the river. He found the perfect spot, so I climbed up after him, and we spent time jumping off the cliff, and ate lunch up on the bluff. One proud moment: I told him that if I did a gainer, he had to do a front flip. He was nervous, and it took him a little while to get up the nerve, but he eventually did it, and was pretty pumped afterwards.

After cliff jumping and swimming in the river, we started hiking back toward the car. It was mostly uphill, which was pretty brutal. After about 2 miles, we stopped in a clearing and threw the frisbee for a bit. While we were throwing the frisbee, we saw two different groups of people turn down a different path than we had taken. We decided to follow them to see where they were going, and they led us right to Goat Trail! The view was awesome, albeit kind of scary. We found a place to sit down, and I gave him part 1 of my letter in which I described the 6 qualities of a Lovett man. Faith, Courage, Resilience, Integrity, Strength, Purpose.

We hiked back to the car, which seemed like a never-ending uphill rocky marathon. We stopped at a food truck for lunch, and then promptly crashed for about 2 1/2 hours back at the cabin. We then drove to a pizza place in Alissa’s old hometown of Harrison, AR and watched the US Men’s basketball team pull out an impressive comeback vs. South Sudan. When we got back to the cabin, we started a fire, and I brought out a trunk in which I had placed letters from different men in Cale’s life. I read each letter to him so that I could emphasize certain things in each one. I could tell that it really meant a lot to him that each of these men took the time to write him a letter. Finally, I read him the letter which I wrote to him and gave him his first Lovett Legacy book, which we will start in August. I explained in detail what the Lovett Legacy would look like over the next year. When we finished, we were walking back into the cabin, and Cale put his arm around me and said, “Thank you for doing all of this for me, Dad.”