Carter Caves and Serpent Mound

This weekend, we were finally able to mesh 5 of the 6 of our schedules to be together for 36 hours. We went to Carter Caves about 1 1/2 hours west of Lexington in Kentucky. We toured Cascade Cave. It was the first time for Jason, Sage and Samantha to have been in a cave. Both Sage and Jason were a bit apprehensive due to the mention of bats but managed to survive. It was a nice refreshing place to visit that we could escape the opressive heat above ground. It was between 45 and 70 degrees underground. It was about 95 above it! LOL!

After we finished at the caves, we visited the public swimming pool on the grounds of the state park. Here is my favorite shot of Dave and Sage in a long time. They were enjoying the cool water and the fun time. We swam for about 3 hours.
Jason enjoying the use of his noodle that we had brought along with us. We didn't have towels though as I was not planning on swimming any place that wasn't at the hotel. I figured that we'd use hotel towels. I'll never make that mistake again! LOL! I managed to dry by laying in the sun. Dave, Jason, Samantha and Sage all used Dave's shirt or their own to finish the job.
Sage's toes after 3 hours the pool.
We ate at the lodge on the state park. A pricey mistake. Don't get me wrong. Anyone with more than one kid knows that it costs a ton to take them to any place to eat that doesn't involve plastic wrapping. We are used to occasionally splurging for a meal out. However, the food quality was not the sort that when you sign a slip for $50, you are happy that you did it. Does that make sense?

After swimming and eating, we returned to the hotel and guess what??? Went swimming again! Shocking, really!

Sunday morning after enjoying the free breakfast at our hotel and paying with the gift certificates we had for almost a year, we ventured up to Serpent Mound in south central Ohio. It has a tiny museum and a tower to climb so that you can get the effect that the mounds are actually shaped like a snake. Well... I made it to the first level of the tower, turned over my camera to Samantha and ran (NOT WALKED) back down. Too much height for me although in retrospect, it wasn't that high. It was metal and you could see through it giving the illusion that it was higher than it was. Samantha took this photo of Dave, Sage and Jason at the top.

Here is a photo of me with my feet planted firmly on the ground. Dave was not feeling well in the heat so Sage and he went to rest in the shade and Sami and Jason drug me past a sign that said hiking trail. Oh MY GOSH! What goes down must come up and it was a really LONG STEEP way down. I thought I was like going to have a heart attack on the way back up. Had to even stop and rest. Huff, Puff, Huff, Puff. Oh yeah and did I mention sweating????
On the way home, we took back roads. I was delighted to find Samantha, OH was on our way home so we stopped and took photos of Samantha under the sign for posterity.