Vacation Part 2

Day two started off sort of groggy due to the nasty night of "sleep" the night before.  However, the kids were delighted to get up and enjoy special camping breakfast.  I indulge them for breakfast when we camp by buying things I never buy on normal days - poptarts and small individual boxes of sugar cereal.  Mmmm.  They were so excited to wake up and have their breakfast.  Once we cleaned up from that, we went on a morning exploratory trip around the park.  There are some good hiking trails that we all enjoyed.  David and Ana especially enjoyed exploring all the little side trails that veered a little too close to the edge of the bluffs for my comfort. 

We happily hiked along, with David and Ana running on ahead of us.  Abby was content to stay with us.  We kept exploring the park and found a cave.  It felt so gloriously cool after our very hot and sticky morning hike.  Here the fog in the bottom of the picture is the coolness of the cave meeting the muggy hotness of the air outside.

We didn't have flashlights with us, so David and Ana explored as far back as they felt comfortable.  Just when we were about to head back to camp, another more prepared family group came along with flashlights.  David, Ana and I tagged along with two boys and their aunt while we all went deeper into the cave.  It was cool and fun.  My thighs got a good burning workout from squatting the entire trip through the cave.

Aaron and Abby amused themselves at the cave entrance by taking pictures of each other.  Abby took this good picture of Aaron.

Finally reemerging into daylight.  It was sad to leave the coolness of the cave.

Coming out - I waddled along in this position for about 75% of the cave.  My legs were sore the next day.

Abby was in picture taking mode and insisted on taking a picture of the rest of us.

Then Ana wanted a turn.

David couldn't be left out of the fun.

By that time, it was time to get some lunch, so we went back to camp for lunch.  It was still hot, though maybe a tiny bit cooler than the day before.  But it was still too hot to want to do much other than swim.  So we found a fun swimming pool in a nearby town.  There were waterslides and all sorts of other fun things to do there.  This was a pool where parents were allowed to catch their children at the bottom of the waterslides which meant Abby finally got to go down the slides.  She was all smiles and spent most of her time going down the big waterslide.  We spent four hours in the pool.  It felt so glorious.  I don't like swimming unless it is a super hot day like that day was - otherwise I just feel cold.  It was four hours of not sweating!  Once the pool closed, we went and got some ice cream to help keep us cool on our way back to camp.  Supper was simple followed by more s'mores on the campfire.

I brought along some glue and the girls went on a nature walk collecting twigs, moss, acorns, clover and other little treasures to make into whatever they desired.  They were busy with that after supper.

When David wasn't making more s'mores or playing with the fire, he was busy working on solving his 4x4 rubix cube.

Aaron happily read during the evening.

I puttered around camp and sat down to read and play games with the girls later on in the evening.  Bedtime was a little less miserable this night as there was a slight breeze to help cool things down by evening.  We also realized that we had over-inflated our air mattress the night before which made things quite uncomfortable.  So we fixed that problem and had a much more comfortable sleep. 

Stay tuned for the next installment of vacation fun!