Vacation - Day 5: Adventures In Nature

Day five of vacation was basically split in two.  The first part of the day was for David and the second part of the day was for me.

When we were planning our vacation, David said he wanted to take the kids through the Civil Defense Caves.  They're not far from Sugar City.  They were once used as a possible bomb shelter option during the cold war.  I said, "Sure.  Let's go."  I don't think I really had any clue what they entailed. I'm not sure what I was thinking: that they were Timpanogas-like with lighting and tour guides? a small little hole in a rock that we could explore?  Whatever it was, I was wrong.  My first clue was when David raided his parents closets for all the coats and flashlights he could find.  Seriously - if I had known, I could have packed the kids coats from home so that they actually fit them!

We drove out to the middle of nowhere and found the cave.  It is pretty cool.  And you would NEVER guess that it's there from the surface.

So, as you enter the mouth of the cave, you drop down a boulder-strewn shaft.  It gets cold and wet and dark very very quickly.  The cave is 40 feet underground and about a half mile long. As soon as I started down, I began to feel a little panicked.  It was a bit more treacherous than I'd anticipated.  Especially for Quinton.   David and I had a few stressful words - not angry words, just stressful words.   I was concerned.  David said, "Fine.  You stay here and wait with Quinton."  I didn't like that idea.  In the end, I decided that we were all just going to do it together, come what may.  

The inside of the cave is actually very cool. Cool like amazing and cool like freezing. It's pitch black, icy in spots, and there are occasional piles of boulders to maneuver around. The ceiling sometimes gets low enough that you have to duck, but never so low that you have to crawl.  In other places, it seems stories high.  The whole place is covered in graffiti.  The four older kids loved it!  

Quinton put a major damper on the fun, though.  If we had it to do over, we would leave him behind with Grandma and Grandpa.  Not only was it difficult for him to climb, but he was cold and angry.  He wanted to hold a flashlight and he DIDN"T want Dad's help AT ALL! He screamed and cried in outrage nearly the entire time - it echoed through the caves in a delightful chorus of rage.

We basically had the cave all to ourselves for the most part.  We only saw a few other people, but that was right at the end.  In spite of the crying baby, I think everyone had a good time.   There was no denying it was a cool cave.  The thing that touched me was how concerned and thoughtful my kids were, especially my boys.  They kept coming over to check on me and make sure I had enough light, my feet were okay, etc.  

Alison was way ahead of us most of the time.  We kept having to call her back.  

This isn't the best picture, but it's right at the end, as the kids are starting to emerge.

And here's the boys after our little adventure.

As we did the day before, we went home to Grandma and Grandpa's house to eat our picnic lunch and put the boys down for their naps. When they woke up, we went on MY adventure.

There's no way to plan this, but as luck would have it, our vacation happened to fall on the one or two weeks per year that wild huckleberries are in season. I LOVE picking wild huckleberries!  I'd never heard of it before I moved to Idaho, and I never missed a year once I did hear of it.  Huckleberry patches are heavily guarded secrets in some circles.  It's funny to hear stories of families where not even the in-laws are allowed to see the family maps that locate their favorite patches.  It's a little insane!

We tried the just-pull-over-every-few-miles-and-see-if-you-find-huckleberries approach.  I mean, we knew basically which area of the forest to be looking, but we just decided to wing it from there.  It took about four tries, but we found some berries!  We discovered that it was pretty picked over near the road, but the deeper we got into the forest, the farther away from the road, the more berries we found!  Pretty soon, we found some beautiful patches!

There's Bronson and I.  He did a super job for a long time!  One of his favorite bedtime stories is "Blueberries for Sal" so he felt like he was in that book!  He got tired after a while, so I just told him to take a break and that he didn't have to pick for the family anymore.  He could eat everything he picked.  That was good enough for him!

There's Alison.  She and Nicole were fantastic pickers!  And Nicki helped me keep the boys happy once they wore out.

Josh did a great job for a while.  Then, he got bored and I told him the same thing I told Bronson.  However, he couldn't resist helping the family here and there.  It really is kind of addicting. You can't just walk past a loaded bush without stopping to pick!

We picked for an hour or so.  Not too long. Then, we had to find our van again - we had wandered a bit while picking!  But we found it! 

We picked about a quart of berries.  On the way home, we picked up a pizza (we REALLY wanted to eat at Big Jud's but it was PACKED when we drove by) and a gallon of ice cream.  Then, we went back to Grandma and Grandpa's house and make huckleberry milkshakes. They were yummy!!!  Then, we watched Zootopia with Grandma and Grandpa.  They'd never seen it before.  We let the boys stay up late to share it with them.  Bronson didn't make it - we had to carry him to bed.  He was really tired from all our adventures!

And with that, we basically wrapped up our vacation.  The next morning, we cleaned, packed, and drove home.  David had a couple more days off, which he used to get some stuff done around the house.  What a great week!

Vacation - Day Four: Local Favorites

We took our time getting up and at 'em on Tuesday morning.  Around 10:00 am, we rolled into Bear World.  Once upon a time, when we lived five miles from it, we were season pass holders at Bear World.  The girls still have fond memories of it, but the three boys had no memory of it at all.

I have mixed feelings about Bear World.  Part of me hates how artificial and touristy it is.  Having camped in Yellowstone nearly every summer of my youth, I like true nature as opposed to artificial nature.  And bear World is INCREDIBLY over priced!  Still, the other part of me has to admit that they do a very good job there.  It's clean and entertaining and loads of fun - especially for little city kids like ours.

We drove through the animal area three times - once when we first arrived, once when we followed the tour bus that feeds the bears so we could see them all gather around, and once when we were leaving.  David promised a milkshake to anyone who spotted the wolves.  They are very hard to find.  However, on the third time through, David himself found them!  It was pretty awesome!

Here's a grizzly

Look at them gather for food!  Looks like my house!

The petting zoo is a fun place to spend some time!  

Nicki and Quin stuck together.  Look at that pot bellied pig!  She made me laugh!

Alison and her woodland friends.

Bronson loved it all, but he was especially interested in the chickens. He loved hanging out by the coop and pointing out the eggs in the nesting boxes to every person who came by.

Josh spent a little time with every animal there.  He's trying to bind with ducks here.

David was totally grossed out by this deer who kept licking his elbow.  Hey, deer - this is a people-pet-animal zoo, not the other way around!

 We spent quite a bit of time in the little carnival ride area.  I guess if you consider how much cash those things cost at a fair or carnival and how many times our kids rode, we probably got our money's worth after all.

Nicki and Quin on the little roller coaster.  He was NOT a fan!

Little twirly bears - kind of like the tea cup rides at other carnivals.  Bronson rode this dozens of times - alone, with strangers, with his own family - he didn't care!

Little free-fall ride.  Alison said she remembered this ride being much more exciting when she was little.

This train was more Quinton's speed.  Both of his sisters were kind enough to take him a million times.

Quin driving a bouncy car.

We stayed at Bear World for nearly four hours.  The boys were in heaven.  We had packed a picnic and our swimming clothes for the rest of our day, but we were so hot and tired by that time that we decided to go back to Grandma and Grandpa's house.  We ate our picnic at their kitchen counter, then put the little boys down for cool, dark, peaceful naps.  It was a good move.

Around 4:00 pm, we put on our swim suits, loaded up the van and headed out to Rigby Lake.  It's just a few miles from our old house.  Again, the girls remembered it, the boys didn't.   Things started out a little rough.  All the kids split up and headed in their own direction.  It's a big, crowded place to set a bunch of non-and-not-great swimmers off on their own!  David and I had a few tense moments gathering our gaggle of Gees and setting some ground rules. Once they were in place, however, and everyone whose feathers were ruffled calmed down a bit, we had a lovely time!

4:00 pm is a great time to be there!  The day time crowd is clearing out and the evening crowd isn't there yet.  We had a large strip of beach to ourselves.

Cute beach boy!

Building sand castles.

Bronson worked hard to make an ocean for his toys.

Josh's sandcastle had a moat with a drawbridge and it had a river that connected it all the way over to Bronson's ocean.

Nicole took on the job of finding large rocks for her siblings' castles.

Found one.

Ali put those rocks to use in her pond.

No trip to the beach would be complete without burying someone at least a little bit.

 We stayed at the lake for a couple of hours.  There is also a fun playground there that the kid spent a few minutes on.  By then, we were all pretty hungry.  Alison and Nicole really wanted to eat at a little place near the lake called The Great Bambino.  Basically, they make circular hot pockets.  They had a store in Rexburg when the kids were little and I guess we ate there often enough that both girls remembered and WANTED them!  So we went!  I will not bore you with the details of that decision - only to say that they were severely understaffed and over busy.  The bambinos were very tasty, but not wait-for-45-minutes-in-your-swim-suit-with-hangry-kids-and-dad-in-the-van tasty.  But we got them!  Then, we drove across the street to Wendy's where we bought fries and drinks to go with them (and a burger for David who didn't want a Bambino).

We got back to the grandparents house, bathed the sand off of everyone, and went to bed!

Vacation - Day Three: Road Trippin'

Day three was when we became tourists.  We wanted to do something we'd never really done before.  So, after a very early morning trip to the grocery store to purchase picnic foods for the week, we loaded up the van and went road trippin'.

We drove a couple of hours (due to a pit stop in Arco to buy diapers and a pacifier - which I forgot to bring) to Craters Of The Moon National Monument.  We've been there before, once.  The girls were very little at the time and we only stayed for an hour or two as we passed through on our way to Boise.

Circa 2006

Also Circa 2006

This time, we did a little more exploring.  It was so fun!  We started at the visitor's center, where the little ones picked up Jr. Ranger manuals.  What a great thing!  Filling out their manuals, looking for all the items on the lists, etc. kept them busy, engaged, and happy the whole time.

Then, we got out and started exploring.  We went on a couple of short walks before lunch.  The landscape is pretty remarkable.  It was very hot that day, but we got there early, before it was miserable.  And it was a little bit windy, which also helped keep us cool.

We found a nice shady picnic table to eat our lunch at.  There were a lot of bees there.  I mean, a LOT.  But lunch was delicious.

After lunch, we went on our biggest adventure.  We went into a cave.  You have to get a special permit to go into them.  David got a permit, so we went exploring.  Actually, Quinton and I hung back a bit, but the others scampered all over the place.  It was cool - both temperature wise and neat wise.

After all their hard work, the kids earned their Jr. Ranger badges.  We stopped by the visitor's center and had a little swearing in ceremony.  The boys were very proud of themselves.  It was cute.  On our way out of the park that afternoon, we found this cool model of one of the caves in Craters Of The Moon.

From craters, we drove to the Atomic Energy Museum.  It is literally in the middle of nowhere (which makes sense if you think about it).

The museum itself was fascinating.  I wish David and I could go there alone and spend some time reading the signs and learning about it.  As it was, with the kids running rampant and me constantly yelling at them to "get back here!" and "don't touch that!" it was probably the low-light of the entire vacation for me.  Still, we saw it and checked it off the list.

Having said that my children drove me crazy at the museum, let me take a moment to say that overall, they were fantastic!  Our kids are so excited and grateful for everything.  Nearly every thing we did was "the best!" and they wanted to "do it again tomorrow!"  They truly get into things and it makes it all the more fun for David and I to watch them.

The drive home was very peaceful.  I turned on some classical music and within a few minutes, everyone was sleeping or dreamily dozing.  David and I were able to quietly chat.  It was wonderful!

We got back to Grandma and Grandpa's house about 15 minutes late for the family party.  Shawn's family, Sue and Kory, and Kristi's family - along with Kristi's brother-in-law and his family, were all there.  There was a ton of amazing food!  Grandma made grilled chicken, hot dogs, and naan. Everyone else brought salads, corn on the cob, fruit, and chips.  We brought popsicles.   There was a lot of eating, laughing, kids playing, and fly shooting.  Then, we all gathered downstairs by the huge television and watched the video that Grandma Gee had put together for her parent's 50th wedding anniversary decades earlier.  It was about 20 minutes long, and told the story of Grandma and Grandpa Shirley's lives.  It was amazing!  Such a great way to spend the evening.

By the time everyone had left, it was past the boy's bedtime.  Everyone was exhausted from a long, full day. We all slept well that night.