Some of what we do

Wednesday, February 19, 2014

WI trip Summer 2013

Maya couldn't wait to go see Grandma and Papa so she was hardly home anytime at all after our family road trip and Grandma came and picked her up and took her to the cabin for some one on one time. That left Alex and I some flexibility to add a little adventure to our drive to the cabin.
We stopped at Chillermania, the "headquarters" of one of the authors that Alex likes Jonathan Rand. Then we took a little detour off US 2 and checked out Fayette State Park.

Fayette State Park is really cool. It was extremely hot that day when Alex and I were there so we didn't even see the whole thing. We didn't hike up to the upper part of the town or do any of the nature trails. We will definitely stop again though!

Then we were home.....

We were gone the first week of July, spent the 4th of July on the road. I think we were in our motel in Kentucky near Mammoth Cave for the 4th. The kids got to watch some fireworks in the distance out the window. It was pouring where we were staying but one of the neighboring towns must have shot their fireworks off quick between storms.
We had a little sun when we got home though so we made sure to hit the beach.

Tuesday, February 18, 2014

Kentucky

We ended up at the National Corvette Museum in Bowling Green. It was the best (and free) indoor thing we could find to do during the monsoon. Alex and Ben loved it and it was cool enough that Maya and I had fun too.

And it's weird to look at some of the pictures now because as of last week there is a huge sinkhole in the middle of one of the rooms and 8 of the cars crashed to the bottom!

From Bowling Green we went to Mammoth Caves....where it didn't matter how much it rained because everything we wanted to see was underground!

Great Rainy Mountain National Park.....I mean Great Smokey Mountain National Park

I honestly don't have many pictures from the Smokey's. We hiked to the top of Clingman's Dome.....but I didn't dare get out my camera. It was the wettest I've ever been on a hike and that was with rain gear on. At the top we were literally inside the cloud that the above mentioned rain was coming from so we didn't have a view to take pictures of!
Most of what I do have was taken on quick hops out of the car here and there.

We saw a lot of deer and 2 bear cubs in a tree from a distance. There were a lot of people stopped and getting dangerously close to the tree with the cubs so we decided to just keep going rather than be a part of that.

We definitely will need to go back here again. It's relatively close to home and it was so rainy we actually ended up cutting our time there a little short to find some indoor things to do.

More waterfalls

Maya was claiming the whole trip to "hate hiking" but was perfectly happy to go along if we called it something other than "hiking". Some of the hikes were challenging because of all the rain making it muddy and slippery. Both kids did very well.

This next hike we tried to squeeze in between storms. We had a car picnic for lunch right before it and set off on the trail as soon as the rain stopped. Then it ended in a sprint to the car in a downpour with me carrying Maya. Up to that point though it was excellent!

Hiking, wading and snake identification

We stopped at a big picnic area (and actually had an outdoor picnic without rain!) and then walked down to a flat area along the river where people were swimming and wading. The kids waded a bit and we looked for quartz.

Then we stood on a bridge and watched the fish for a while and an older couple offered to give the kids some bread to feed them. We fed the fish and talked with them for quite a while. They lived nearby and this was one of their favorite areas to come for a drive and a little walk. They told us stories about the area. They told us where they usually see snakes....right over there on those rocks.....oh look there are snakes there now!