Cub Scout Hiking

The "summer activities" patch for Cub Scout is to attend at least one pack organized event for each month of summer vacation.   In June, William did the fishing event and in August we have a Raingutter Regatta.  The usual July event is to walk in the Brookdale 4th of July parade but we were on vacation.   So we organized a pack hike at the forest preserve across from our neighborhood.  We were retracing the route we took on our wintry April hike with the Webelos den.  This was a toasty warm, sunny Sunday, and it was a nice group of Scouts, parents and siblings.  We ended up walking 3.8 miles after detour to the dam and to watch the fish.

 

After William got home, he and his buddy rode their bikes to the pool to cool off.   When he finally got home to relax - really his first time to sit and play at home in over a week - he set to work on a bunker and battle using his newly acquired WWII army men from the Eisenhower Museum. 

 

Camp Kansas

William enjoyed his annual summer vacation trip to Kansas.   Grandpa Roger even took three days off of work for their adventures:  shooting, fishing trip to Milford Lake, and a trip to Abilene (Eisenhower Presidential Museum and Greyhouse Museum).   He also got to do some gardening at the community garden and fishing at the neighborhood pond.

As William has gotten older, he had gotten to try out different guns for target practice during his Kansas visit.   Apparently his aim is pretty good.  Must be all those video games he plays!

 

 Fishing in the neighborhood!

 

William really loves fishing, so I was so excited that my dad booked a fishing charter for one of their days.  Joining them were our former neighbor and two of his grandsons.  Although my dad has been out with this charter several time and caught giant fish, this particular day no one caught much.   Sounds like it was still a lovely day to be out on the water, but no tall tales about the big catch.

 

Grandpa Roger also took World War II history buff, William, to the Eisenhower Presidential Museum.   The museum was still under construction so they didn't see as many exhibits as usual, but William was thrilled with his "army guys" souvenir.    They also checked out a museum that has two retired greyhound ambassadors.   This dog loving boy enjoyed that for sure!

 

My Birthday

Another year older!  These photos are definitely being posted here for the purpose of having a printed memory of my team pulling out all the stops for a silly birthday surprise!  It's not unusual to have lunch or cupcakes for a birthday (in fact, there is a tax department wide monthly Cupcake Cake that celebrate the 20-30 or so birthdays each month).   But my team decided on a highly personalized celebration this year!   

 My Deloitte badge photo printed on a carrot cake

Cinderella Castle printed on cupcakes

 

Marceline, MO

As a continuation of our roadtrip, we met up in Walt Disney's childhood hometown and toured this well done little museum.  It has been on my wish list to visit for awhile, but it's only open seasonally, and we don't drive this direction often.  For any Disney fan living in Kansas or Missouri, it's worth a detour.  It's a lovely tribute and history and a nice use of 90 minutes to 2 hours of an afternoon.

One of my favorite stories that I heard on our tour was that Walt's uncle was a train conductor and had a special way of blowing his horn on his way into town.   Walt would hear it and run down to meet him and ride the last mile into town with his uncle on the train.

As we were leaving we stopped to chat with the person at the desk.  He had already been very friendly in finding my mom a spot to sit while my dad and William and I toured the museum.  We talked about DVC and visiting the various Disney parks.  It came up that the next day was my birthday, so he gave me a birthday button!  It's definitely my most prized birthday gift this year!

On my solo drive home, I listened to Michelle Obama's audiobook.   It helped pass the time on the 6 hour drive, but it wasn't nearly as fun as the drive out with my little side kick listening to a Harry Potter audiobook!

Hannibal, MO

This year to meet up with my parents to get William to Camp Kansas, we changed up our meeting point from West Des Moines, IA to Marceline, MO.   So I decided to cross "semi-impromptu roadtrip" off of the Summer Fun List and stay overnight in order to do a little sightseeing in Hannibal.    We both had dental appointments on Saturday morning so didn't get on the road until noon.    We got lucky and arrived as the next Mark Twain Cave tour was departing, so we were able to jump in and join it.    That was good because we would have had to wait another 90 minutes otherwise.

 

 

 

 It was about 95 degrees but the cave is high 50s, so we packed our sweaters.   After our cave tour we went downtown and enjoy an ice cream at the soda shop and played some old fashioned tic-tac-toe.  This shop had every old fashioned candy and tourist trap souvenir imaginable.  It was perfect!

 

To make for a perfectly perfect roadtrip, we stayed overnight at a hotel where we had the pool and hot tub all to ourselves, had Taco Bell carryout in bed for dinner, and made our own waffles at the hotel free breakfast buffet before heading to Marceline.  What a great mother-son weekend!

TGRT Day 8: Jackson to SLC

Alas, our vacation finally had to come to an end!   After our relaxing days in Teton Village, we made one more pass through the city of Jackson to hit up the Snow King Mountain Resort activities and then we drove back to Salt Lake City.   I wanted to go to Snow King because my friend Courtney talked up the alpine slide.   But when I was researching the slide online to show William, I got it confused with the resort's Cowboy Coaster and we ended up watching video of that.   So...we had to do both!  I was most concerned about the safety of the Cowboy Coaster but as we were waiting to board it, a mom and her young son (maybe 4 years old?) behind us said they had wiped out on a joint ride down the alpine slide.  They had massive road rash from flipping and skidding.   I was panicked for William to wipe out since he was old enough to ride the slide himself.  

So after he rode with John on the Cowboy Coaster (he was an inch too short to drive that one himself), we took the ski lift (also a frightening mode of transport for me) up to the slide hill.    But it turns out my crash panic was for naught.  He was too lightweight to get any speed going on the slide....in fact, he could barely get it to go at all!    It was so slow that I had to come to a complete stop on my ride behind him in order to leave the correct amount of distance between us.   Made for an anti-climatic slide!

Since we didn't have to stop at all the scenic overlooks and ice cream stands on our way back into SLC like we did on our way out, it only took 5 hours instead of 6+.  We got settled into a hotel by the airport and then sought out the Diners, Drive-in and Dives recommended Red Iguana for some authentic Mexican food.   It was tasty!  Our bellies full we slept in borrowed beds one last night before making the SLC-MDW return flight on Sunday.   It only took 2-3 days to get all the laundry done from the prior 9!