Glow Stick Dancing

Salt Flats

The four of us went on a camping trip to Oklahoma over the weekend to the Salt Flats. Saturday morning we did a little nature exploring before heading to the dig site. We found this cute little interpretive nature trail and the kids had a ball looking for animal signs...

... and liberating the cattail seeds. : )

We saw lots of birds including a Great Horned Owl. We scared it from it's roost and a Red-shouldered Hawk decided to mess with the poor guy by screeching and doing fly-bys the rest of our walk. Too bad I ran out of battery by that point. : (

The kids really enjoyed the chewed beaver tree but we never located the little guy's den. We did, however, find a really awesome groundhog burrow!
After lunch back at the campground we headed to the Salt Flats to dig for selenite crystals.
The hourglass shape of the crystals is only found in the salt plains.
It was a beautiful, sunny day...


... and the crystals were plentiful.

We found many, many treasures after only a few minutes of digging.
In total, we spent an hour digging, but that was enough for the kids. With NO shade even a nice 70 degree afternoon can get a little hot.
They are already talking about when they can go back! : )
And here is our collection... some big, some small...
... and one more for the record books for our 2011 Digging for Treasure tour through the US. Anyone have any ideas for our next trip? Our shovels are cleaned and ready! : )

After a cleanup back at camp we took a bike tour of the Great Salt Plains Lake. Oklahoma has been experiencing a severe drought this year, but there was still some water to attract the birds.

And LOOK! I can prove I was really there! : )
This park was thriving with wildlife. This little critter is the first armadillo I have ever seen in the wild ALIVE!! I see them dead on the side of the road all the time, but this park had a very healthy population and we saw many on this trip. The kids were so excited... maybe because their mom was making a big to-do out of it?

This state park also had the BIGGEST group of turkey vultures I have EVER seen!

We were sitting at the picnic table and I look up to see over 70 of these guys flying above us. I know, because I tried to count them and got up to 70 before I had to give up!

Of course, what family camping trip would be complete without a big, ugly bug for all you to gasp at? This preying mantis was in my chair and climbed up the pole when I tried to take his photo. The the kids ran around like the monkeys they are trying to catch a bug to feed him. HA! I just love those crazy kids to pieces... and I have no idea how they would have gotten that idea in the first place. : )

We finished out our night with a sunset drive that took us to the top of the dam.

Beautiful.

Blog Catch Up

So sorry that I haven't been keeping up with the blog this month. Work, homework, scouts, and gymnastic have kept me super busy during the week and the weekends have been just as full.

Right now I'm working of post dating some of the cool things we've been keeping busy with so take a look back over the last 2 weeks for some retro Monkeys!

Family Bike Ride

I've been wanting to try out this bike path that follows the Arkansas River and on this beautiful day we loaded up the bikes to continue our weekend of firsts!

The kids enjoyed ridding under and over the various bridges.

And Amanda did a much better job keeping up. My goal is to keep taking her to nice paved bike trails to increase her confidence in her bike riding. However, no matter how much she begs, the answer is no every time she asks for her training wheels back on. The girl can do it! She just needs practice.
There wasn't a lot of wildlife to see in the heart of the city, but we did spot this super cool water snake while traveling over one of the bridges.

Our ride took us to an old favorite park that we haven't been to in about 2 years. The kids enjoyed playing in the creek far more than the playground. THAT'S MY KIDS!

Drive-In Movie

Another first for us was taking the kids to the local drive-in theater. We've been wanting to go for quite awhile, but the movies are usually not kid appropriate (at least in my opinion). This weekend they were showing Smurfs and Cars 2 so we packed the cooler and snack bag, through in some pillows and blankets and hit the road!

The kids thought it was super exciting and it was very nice to be able to stretch out, get comfortable, and not worry about disturbing the neighbors if Logan or Amanda asked a question. It was a VERY busy night at the drive in and we didn't get the best of spots, but we still really enjoyed both movies.

Amanda fell asleep during Smurfs and was very disappointed the next day that she missed the whole Cars movie but Eric promised to rent it for her when it comes out on DVD and she was okay with that.

Logan (the little night owl) stayed up through both movies and could probably have done one more (but 1:00 in the morning is late enough, don't ya think?)

Hutchinson Salt Museum

Labor Day Weekend was a weekend of "firsts" for us. My mom, sister and her kids came for a visit and we took them to the Hutchinson Salt Museum for a day of fun. This has been on my To Do list since we moved to Wichita and we were happy to be able to cross this off the list with such good company.
The museum is all underground in a previously mined section of the salt beds.

After climbing into the elevator and traveling 650 into the earth

we emerged into this massive corridor with many interesting exhibits on the history of salt mining. The kids really enjoyed the hands-on exhibits like this one on the three by products of salt mining. This stuff is better than Moon Sand!

I took many, MANY pictures and I won't make you look at all of them, but one of the activities was a train ride around the various parts of the mine.

Here some of us are ready for our trip... with 9 people in our party it was hard to sit together.
But for some reason, my teenage nephew really enjoyed sitting next to me! I'm sure it's not because I'm so crazy silly that I keep him in stitches with my witty humor. I think it was because I was the lesser of the "evils" at the time. Sit next to his brother or me? Hmmm. Tough choice. I tried my best to make him regret his decision. : )
One of the other tours we took was the Dark Ride on a tram. Along the way they stopped and let us "mine" for our own salt rock souvenirs.

What a super fun way to spend the afternoon. I highly recommend it if you find yourself in the area.

Amanda's New Pet

Random ramblings of a cute little monkey.