Mammoth Cave Trip

As some of you may know, we took a trip to Mammoth Caves over Memorial Day weekend. Mammoth Caves is down in Kentucky about a four hour drive from our home and in that four hours, we felt like we were entering another country. Kentuckians are definitely southerners with the accents and Baptist churches. We camped at Jellystone right outside the park and the girls loved it. I tried to take a picture of them smiling, looking at the camera but no luck.



Here is our campsite.



The girls enjoyed playing with the neighbor kids and using their toys like this wagon, especially when the other kids weren't around.



The girls also liked swimming for the most part. Elizabeth was responsible for shutting down the kiddie pool with a little poop, fun times!

We did see Mammoth Caves and went on the historic tour--2 hours 2 miles. Good thing we didn't go on the three hour tour because you know what happens on those (hint, Gilligan's island). We couldn't take our camera case or any purse into the caves and we were already carrying two sleepy girls so unfortunately we don't have any pictures of the caves themselves. They're big holes in the ground, use your imagination! They are pretty impressive and stretch for over 300 miles of known caves, the longest in the world. Eric especially loved carrying a sleeping Elizabeth through fat man's misery where it's tight from the waist down and tall man's agony where you have to bend over to get through. Elizabeth and Rachel did wake up during the tour and experienced lights out and the cave silence. Elizabeth was a real trooper at the end where we went up a 138 stairs, the tour had a total of 440.

So the caves were our Saturday excursion and on Sunday we went to a nondenominational church service in the campground run by a group from a Baptist church. We went on a little drive in Mammoth Cave Park and went across a ferry. They must not get much traffic through to have a ferry instead of a bridge.



We stopped off at Sloan's pond where Eric and Rachel slept in the car and Elizabeth and I took a walk around the pond and had lunch. We saw a lizard with a blue tail and some turtles.




We went swimming again to cool off and then relaxed a little before going back to the park for one too many hikes (we shouldn't have gone on the second). Eric and I are pretty happy, the girls are just tuckered out.





Our little trooper of a hiker with daddy's bandanna.



Monday we packed up camp and came back to the oh-so-normal state of Ohio! It's good to be back in my own bed and sleep through the night. I love camping but I'm a real grouch, as many can attest to, when I don't get a good night's sleep. I think the girls had fun camping but were also glad to be home. I haven't even mentioned one of the best things about camping, the food! I'm serious, Eric has gotten dutch oven cooking down so we had some very yummy meals and I only cooked one of them--mountain man's breakfast, cobbler, and pizza. We also did smores and hot dogs over the fire and poor Elizabeth burned her hand with the poker. Overall it was a good trip and maybe we'll do another camping trip this summer/fall.

UPDATE
Eric adds:
I want to add some comments to Elizabeth's swimming experience. The second time we went swimming I took her to the big pool (the little one was closed again because of somebody else). She really enjoyed being in the water and I taught her how to kick. She kind of got the idea, so I taught her how to move her arms. She barely got that concept, but she was trying (it kind of looked like doggy paddling). I held her stomach and she was "swimming." She was so excited. She kept saying, "I'm swimming Daddy, I'm swimming like the fishies." Then she started trying to make me let go. You see, in her mind she could swim now and I was just holding her back. Well, I didn't let go, I tried to explain that she couldn't quite swim yet, but she was determined. I would periodically put her up on the side of the pool for us to take a break. I did that one more time and faced her with one arm on each side of her on the edge of the pool. I closed my eyes for a second to clear some of the chlorine out and when I opened my eyes she was jumping in the pool. I tried to grab her, but she went under the water first. When I finally picked her up she was screaming and crying. In between the sobs all she could say was, "I can' swim daddy, I can't swim like the fishies."

It was such a sad moment for me as a parent. The rest of the day she didn't want to go into the pool. I felt like it was the first time she lost some of her childhood innocence. It was like she came out of the water a little less naive and a little bit more cynical. I imagine there are plenty of more times as a parent that I will have to let her try something I know she's not ready for and feel the pain of seeing her fail, but this was just a total disillusionment on her part and it was sad to watch. I hope she somewhat forgets and enjoys swimming again someday.

Backpacking Trip Photos

Below you'll see a nice little cave, this area was close to Hocking Hills, where we took our Christmas vacation.

Here you can see what looks like some work the beavers have been doing on the trees.


Look at this crazy tree.

Hiking Fun

With our anniversary coming up, Eric and I thought we'd go on a trip to celebrate. We flew out my sister Melissa who just successfully finished her first year at BYU to watch the kids and took off on an overnight backpacking trip. We went to Zaleski State Forest which is really close to Hocking Hills where we got a cabin over Christmas. They have a nice backpacking loop there with designated campsites. Eric helped me purchase the gear I needed and has sold me on some of the ultralight stuff. We weighed my pack without food or water and it was only 10 lbs. I think that's lighter than my backpack when I'd walk to school with all my accounting books in it. Anyway, we hiked in about 2 miles and pitched our tent and used Eric's alcohol stove to cook dinner which I thought was pretty good for instant rice and bagged chicken.

We had a nice evening enjoying the beautifully green trees, rolling hills, and birds talking to one another. Once it got dark, we went in our small two-man tent and played some fierce games of Uno with Eric's ultra-small, ultra-light game cards and of course I won all the games :)

After a typical bad night of camp sleeping even with a comfortable air mattress, earplugs, and eye shades, we ate breakfast, packed up our gear, and took off for an 8-mile hike. Eric loved playing with his GPS and we enjoyed a good hike of up and down hill workout. We saw some small caves and did I mention it was absolutely gorgeous? Sorry, our pictures are on the old-school single use film camera so who knows if I’ll ever get that developed let alone scanned into the computer. Since everything just grows naturally in Ohio, including the trail, they marked the trail with orange paint splotches on trees every 10-15 feet so you knew you were still on it. It was tiring but fun and I'm glad Eric and I got out alone, without the kids for a fun adventure in nature.

I did do some other fun things with Melissa while she was out here. I took her thrift store shopping and we went to the Columbus zoo. I bought a year's pass so I'll have to go back with Eric sometime. I hope after spending so much time with my children that Melissa will still want to have kids in the future :)

Here's the girls with a tiger--don't worry, it's not real :)



This is an okapi which looks a lot like a cross between a donkey and zebra but it's really in the giraffe family. An okapi's tongue is so long it can clean its own ears--yuck!



Melissa and I just loved this monkey with its pink bottom.



Since I haven't posted in awhile, I'll let you know what I've been up to besides having fun with Eric and Melissa. Two weeks ago I ran a 5k with the girls and Eric cheering me on. Since it was my first of the season I didn't do very well time wise but I did win first in my age division for women (25-30). There weren't many runners in the race so it wasn't that hard but I'll have to start training for the WPAFB half marathon I hope to do in September. After my race, Eric took Elizabeth to the circus while I took Rachel home for a nap.

Normal things I've been up to include staying busy as Primary president, I'm grateful for great counselors and secretary who make my job easier. My garden is up and growing although I wish it would rain one of these days, I mean this is Ohio! The girls keep me pretty busy and I'm glad that we can go outside and play a lot.



[Edit from Eric]
I actually slept well when we were camping. It's amazing what taking some motrin and benadryl (twice) will do to help you sleep. Plus I actually think I was more comfortable with my 3/4 length Insulmat mattress than with the longer one. I think having my legs lower meant my hip didn't come to quite as much as a point, which is usually where I get sore when sleeping outdoors (side sleeper). Of course, it could also have been the benadryl. My arms also frequently fall asleep when sleeping on my mat, I'm not sure what to do about that. I did find that my down bag wasn't too hot when I completely unzipped it and laid it over me like a quilt (approximately 60 degrees overnight).

I recently bought a Garmin Geko 201 GPS unit, which is pretty cool. I reset the track data half way into our hike into the site, but the maps below show the rest of our hike that night and the next day on a topo map and overlaid on a satellite photo. I used EasyGPS and USAPhotoMaps to overlay the tracks, two free programs.