Thursday, August 28, 2014

Favorites from Camping and Ape Cave

We hadn't gone camping with just our family for a lo-o-ong time.  So we reserved a site as close as possible to Ape Cave, another location we've been wanting to visit.

Nathan:  loved roasting hot dogs and marshmallows.  Favorite from Ape Cave: 'sliding down the ramp'(?!)

Daniel:  loved s'mores! (but didn't like being left behind when the big kids got to try hiking the upper section of Ape Cave on Saturday)

Joseph: eating s'mores and crawling in ape caves.

Caleb:  lower caves: easy; upper caves: hard (he & Joseph were too short to scramble over the huge boulders in the way)

Beth:  S'mores, and climbing part of the upper caves was fun.

Jacob:  S'mores and the cave was cool in two different ways.

Michael:the lower cave  wasn't nearly as interesting as the upper, but going a ways without a functioning headlamp was interesting.

Rebekah: breaking a board in half with my foot and crawling/army crawling all the way to the end of the lower caves. And breaking out in song and even occasionally having people join in the whole weekend.

mom:  S'mores, of course!  The lava tube cave was COOL once I got over being trapped underground in an enclosed space:P  Another surprising favorite was listening to 'The Books of Umber' on CD during the drive--we need to find another hour's worth of drive somewhere soon, to finish it, though!  I loved having bigger kids for this camping trip -- no midnight bathroom runs or major spills or messes, plus they're actually helpful:)
It's nice to just tell teenagers to put the tent up, and they do it!

Beth volunteered to whittle shavings to start the fire with
Boys + sticks + rock = game
Wishing for a string
Love our family-size tent!
The stakes were missing, and hammer forgotten.  So they made stakes from sticks, and hammered with firewood.
Splitting the wood cutoffs we brought for firewood turned into a contest.
Nathan-sized sticks






In Ape Cave's lower tunnel
The VERY end of the lower tunnel--you had to crawl to get to this point (I did NOT take the picture:)
Ape Cave's lower tunnel
Ape Cave's lower tunnel:  'the meatball'
exiting the cave: there's a HUGE temperature change in those few feet!
The older kids climbed a little ways into the upper cave, so were behind the rest of us
A little information:)

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