Caves and Wild Animals

Our last couple of weekends have been busy with visiting the sites and attractions of Central Pennsylvania with Logan and Landen, our grandsons. They are now at the age where they enjoy doing these things and their attention spans are just a little bit longer. What is so much fun for My Bob and me is that we went on these same exact excursions with Austin and Brandon (our sons, L & L's father and uncle) about 22 or 23 years ago. In fact, I was going through some old picture albums and I have a few of these same exact pictures with Austin and Brandon at this same age.
Last Saturday we visited Indian Caverns. This is a walking cave tour with a guide. The boys felt like we were on a real Indiana Jones adventure and felt like Bobby (that's what they call Grandpa) should be carrying a gun just in case there were any bad guys or monsters. Fortunately we didn't come across either.

Outside the cave was this tee pee that little kids just love to go in. I didn't even remember this tee pee being there 23 years ago, but there in the old photo album was this exact same picture with my little boys peeking out the opening of this very same tee pee.

Also the same totem pole.

On the way back from Indian Caverns we stopped at a place that our boys loved to go to, even up into their teens, called Bilger's Rocks. This is like the best playground ever for little boys. It's a series of rocks and valleys and little caves and walkways deep inside the rocks that you can get lost in. It actually could be very dangerous because there are very sharp rocks and steep drop offs. The boys loved it. I complained that I was too old to be doing this until I saw an older woman than me just hiking and climbing along, so I shut up. Wasn't my idea of fun except for watching the boys have fun.

Yesterday, we decided to take a Sunday drive with Logan and Landen and also my parents to Penn's Cave. This is a boat tour through a cave and there is also a wildlife bus tour that we didn't go on. Their attention span (and mine and Mom's) wouldn't hold out.

This was a better cave tour for, shall we say, the older generation. No walking or climbing.
As we were driving up the entrance to the cave property this herd of Bison was off behind an electric fence. None of us had ever seen Bison, or Buffalo for that matter, up close or even far away in person before. They are huge.


Inside the cave and the back of My Bob's head with his little shadow, Landen, on his lap.

Took a little seat after coming out of the cave. It was a beautiful, autumn feeling day. Logan just couldn't sit still any longer, though.

So we were leaving the property to head back home and right in front of us, on the edge of the wildlife area was this huge elk. It was only there a minute and wouldn't turn it's head toward us, but we had never seen one of those in person before, either.

We stopped at this Harley Davidson store to show the boys some motorcycles but it was closed. So they got up on the rock carving and loved it just the same.

We had such a fun couple of weekends with our boys. And we should have just come straight home after the Harley shop, but thought we'd make one last stop in State College (Penn State) for ice cream cones at the Creamery. The ice cream was excellent, but we were sitting outside at a little table and Landen's cone was dripping all over his hand and table and a little bee thought the ice cream on his hand looked good. It landed on his hand and as Bob pushed it off with his own hand it stung both of them. Landen screamed. I felt so sorry for him. We got ice and wrapped his hand up and he was fine by the time we got home.

I just got a call from DIL and their Day Care subsidy is being cut off due to no budget for Pennsylvania. In order for them to keep both boys in Day Care from noon to 5 (after pre-school) five days a week it would cost $240.00. Isn't that awful? So DIL just put in her notice at work that she is quitting as soon as they can hire and train someone else. I'm very glad to hear that. So she asked if I would be able to keep the boys after pre-school for a few weeks. Of course I said yes. If it were not a temporary situation I wouldn't have agreed to that. It sounds like she and Austin are discussing a lot of possible adjustments and changes to their work and home issues. I'm much encouraged by this. Everything always works out eventually. Patience is the key.