Fishing Week

 Brian always refers to beach week as "fishing week" because that is his favorite vacation activity.  He spends most of his time on the pier.  The kids have also caught the fishing bug, and this is also their number one beach activity. Brian and the kids caught lots of fish (and a couple of sharks) this week.

 A lot of the fishing happens at night.  I think that our crew cleaned Walmart out of all the their headlamps.

Of course, the expectation is that the kids will do all of the "dirty work" themselves- including baiting their hooks, handling the fish, and even some cleaning.  

I'm glad that the kids like doing this with their dad.

The Beach

 Sitting on the beach is my favorite thing to do during the week.  I would usually go down after lunch and stay about 3 hours or so.  The kids came to the beach several times as well.  Their favorite thing to do on the beach is boogie board.  Here are some of my favorite beach pictures from this year.

 Gigi bought the older girls matching swimsuits, and they looked super-cute.

Beach Vacation 2017

 We have just returned from our annual beach vacation on Amelia Island.  We had the most wonderful time.  In all we had a total of 32 people (12 kids) in 5 different condos.  Our family had our own condo this year, and that was really nice.  We were also on the bottom floor- which is my preference.  The best part, though, was that Olivia and Owen were finally old enough to go to the pool / pier / their cousin's condo on their own, so Brian and I had more time to do the things we wanted to do (fishing for him, sitting on the beach for me).  The week was so relaxing.

Shrek the Musical

 One of the things that we look forward to each summer is attending a performance of the Peach State Summer Theater with Granny Mel.  This year's production was Shrek the Musical.  It was so entertaining.  The kids loved it.  While all of the actors were fantastic, the kids liked Lord Farquad the best.  The actor playing him had to walk on his knees the whole time, and this just made the character really funny. While we were in Valdosta we had a nice meal and went to Books-a-Million, so it was just an all-around fun day.

On the Road with Papa

 Well, the vacation was over but we still had to make the long drive back home.  Brian had to get back to work so he flew home and my dad flew in to ride back home with us.

 We made a few pit stops in the Black Hills to show Daddy some of our favorite spots.

 We spent our first night in Wall and had another meal at the famous Wall Drug.  Olivia was happy that she got to have another buffalo hot dog.

 We drove through the Badlands on our second day home so that Daddy could see the beautiful scenery.

 On the third day we stopped at one of the kids' favorite places on earth- City Museum.  They have both declared this to be there favorite thing of the whole trip.  The roof was open this time, and they got to go up there.  They crawled, climbed, slid, and played for four hours.  We even got my dad on a few of the slides (including the 10-story slide).  This is the neatest place.

On the last day of our trip home, we stopped in Atlanta to visit the two cutest baby boys in the world (my nephews).  We got lots of love and baby sugar.  Those boys are growing so fast.

We are home now, and are resting up.  Being on the road for nearly two weeks will certainly take it out of you.  Even though it was a busy vacation, we all enjoyed seeing new parts of the country.  We are definitely going to do more extended road trips in the future.

The Mammoth Site

 On our last day in the Black Hills area, we traveled south to Hot Springs to visit the Mammoth Site.  During the ice age, there was a hot spring that had steep sides.  Because the water in the spring was warm, vegetation would grow around it year-round.  Animals would come to eat, fall in the spring, get stuck, and die.  As a result, there are tons of bones from various animals in one spot. This is an active dig site which has uncovered bones from 61 different mammoths so far.  There are bones from other animals as well.  I'd never heard of a short faced bear before visiting this site, but this ancient animal would have been terrifying.  I'm glad it's extinct.  We had a nice visit and then headed to Rapid City so that Brian could catch his plane the next day.  We really enjoyed our time in South Dakota.

Devil's Tower and Deadwood

 We spent one full day traveling north and west of our hotel in Custer.  Our first stop was Devil's Tower NM in Wyoming.  We didn't have any "close encounters of the third kind", but we did hike the trail around the base of the monument. That was about all that there was to do there.  Let me just say this about Wyoming- there is nothing there.  We googled it, and it ranks 51st in population.  Washington D.C. has more people than the entire state of Wyoming.  It was crazy driving for miles and not seeing any towns or cars or anything.

 After leaving Wyoming we traveled to the north part of the Black Hills and ended up in the town of Deadwood.  Back in the day, this boom town was full of gambling and alcohol.  Not much has changed.  The historic buildings are now bars, casinos, and souvenir shops.  Not really a kid-friendly place.  We did see the saloon where Wild Bill Hickok was shot and we went to his and Calamity Jane's graves.

 Since we were up in the north section of the park anyway, we decided to do the Spearfish Canyon scenic drive, which began in the town of Spearfish.  We made a quick stop off at the D.C. Booth fish hatchery where we saw tons of trout.  We were there at feeding time, and the kids (and Brian) got to help with that.

 The Spearfish Canyon Loop ran along a stream and there were several waterfalls right off the road.  We stopped at two.  The second required a short hike, but was worth the effort.  The kids wanted to touch the water wherever we went to see how cold it was.  It was always really cold.