There's a little wild piece of Lower Southampton that's always on vacation. There are no suburban fences dividing yards, no pavement. Homes hung with strings of lights are scattered happily down grassy hills. The Neshaminy Creek flows nakedly by, with no chain-link fences to ward off the neighborhood kids. 

On Tuesday, though, this idyllic place almost killed Lacey VanWinkle, age 3 and full of curiosity. Just before dinner, Lacey wandered away from her house, fell off a dock into a creek and nearly drowned. 

Her dad dove in and brought her back to shore as her terrified mother looked on from the streambed. It was determined that she suffered no injuries from the fall after hours of observation at St. Mary Medical Center in Middletown. 

"She said she wanted to look at the fish," said her dad, Tom VanWinkle. "She's going to be scared of water for a little while. But the creek is just a part of life here." Seventeen Acres at 916 Manor Lane, owned by the Neshaminy Falls Campground Association, is aptly described by Tom VanWinkle as "a little bit of the Poconos." The banks of the Neshaminy open up into a broad grassy bowl, a free, open playground with a basketball hoop and stacks of silver canoes.

The roads are mostly bare gravel or dirt, and only one lane wide. Plastic frogs sit on doorsteps. Swing sets are scattered about. 

The VanWinkles' home faces the creek, now swollen by spring rains. The VanWinkles told Lacey to never go near the water. They taught her to swim in a friend's pool. 

But kids are good at wandering off. "Children are naturally curious," said Lower Southampton patrolman Stephen Castle, who was the first to respond to the 911 call. "She just wandered a little too far away and there was a dangerous creek nearby." 

Lacey and her neighborhood friends had recently become enamored of rollerskating following a skating birthday party. They had gone to the basketball courts by the creek on Tuesday to practice their moves. 

About 5 p.m. that day, the VanWinkles were sitting down to dinner with their other three children, and Kathy VanWinkle called to her daughter Lacey to come inside. 

The toddler and her two friends took off their skates, but when only two of them showed up on the VanWinkles' porch with very big eyes, Kathy VanWinkle knew immediately that something was wrong. 

"It was so quick. She couldn't have been down there [at the dock] more than a minute, because I was looking for her," said Kathy VanWinkle. 

She and Tom sprinted out of the house without shoes. Tom, who headed 20 feet downstream from the dock, could see his soaked daughter crying, "Dad!" as the current smashed her around. 

He jumped into the cold, muddy Neshaminy - where he'd been swimming all his life - and pulled her out. He handed her to his niece Chantal, and then noticed he'd lost a set of dentures in the water. 

"A small price to pay," he said. 

"I wasn't even thinking, I just jumped in," Tom VanWinkle said. "I couldn't even swim against the current; it was so strong. I had to grab tree branches to move." 

When the police arrived a few minutes later, Lacey was cuddled in her mother's arms, cold, soaked and crying. A checkup at St. Mary Medical Center confirmed she was all right, and she was back at home soon, scampering about the living room, blond pigtails flying. 

Tom VanWinkle grew up in their home near the creek; his grandparents owned the house first. He said the area is largely unchanged since he was a boy, except for the creek. 

"The current is faster now," he said. "It's because of the new developments coming up around St. Mary's in Middletown." 

As for Lacey, she had a few nightmares Tuesday night, and has apologized to her mom over and over. But Lacey's moving on, and is "totally back to herself today," said Kathy VanWinkle.