Back from Maquoketa

We had a good time camping at Maquoketa Caves State Park in IA, until the rain got the best of it. We were okay with the rain, as it was at night and in the morning, and we had plenty of hiking time during the days. The park is full of caves, and the damp, coolness around them helped make up for the very hot temps. Between the humidity and rain, though, I managed to stay completely damp for the entire trip. I don't enjoy dampness. We had to give up and leave early, which we've NEVER done before.

We've made it through much worse storms, but that was with our old tent, which was fabulous. Our new tent didn't hold up nearly as well, and when our sleeping bags, pillows, and ourselves were soaked inside the tent and there was standing water inside with no indication of the storms breaking anytime soon, we had to call it and leave. M & I packed up the van in the pouring rain and then had the joy of taking down and trying to pack up a very wet tent. We were so happy to get home to dry clothes!

The tent before the big rain out. It was the first time L slept in her own 'wing' by herself, though we didn't put up the room dividers. Usually, she piles in next to me.

M decided that, instead of returning our tent and going with a different one, he wants to do some weather proofing on this tent and give it another try.

L has always found a little 'friend' within the first half hour of arriving at any camp site we've ever gone to. She usually gets right to work at building a house/habitat for her new little friend while we set the tent up. This time, her little friend was a snail. The trip was a booming success for her, as we saw lots of critters, she caught lots of frogs, she got very dirty, and got to play in the water. That's the recipe for her happiness. This trip also had lots of caves that she loved exploring. I was hoping to see lots of bats and strange cave creatures, but in 16 caves, we saw no signs of bats. I thought that was very weird.

It was really difficult to get any good pictures in the caves. They are all dark and very misty, so the pics don't come out too well.

We did manage to hike all six miles of trails, and even repeated some trails between rainstorms. The trails were almost all dirt, which tends to be wet, because of the caves and constant humidity down there. On top of that, several days of rain and humid weather left us hiking in very slippery mud. Somehow I made it without falling, and that's a pretty prideful thing for such a clumsy woman to accomplish!

Last night we had date night, although I was feeling pretty rotten and wasn't too much fun. We just kept it low key and went to see the movie, The Hangover, which was as good as we'd heard. We laughed a lot and look forward to seeing it again. I think my absolute favorite scene was the cheesy white-guy wedding singer performing 'Candy Shoppe' as a ballad, with it's original lyrics. I laughed through the whole song!

My dad and M wanted to take a trip to the Flower Factory today, and since it's Father's Day, that's what we did. We then had lunch at Red Robin, where Dej & Joe met us.

I'm sidetracked...trying to type while 'Issues with Jane Velez Mitchell' is on in the background. I like Jane, as she's an animal rights person, and it just so happened that she's now doing a segment with Ingrid Newkirk about a proposed chimp-breeding facility that they are trying to stop from being built in Puerto Rico. This would supply baby monkeys to cruel and painful UNNECESSARY torturous experiments by "science". That misnomer always angers me, and I was happy to see that Ingrid corrected this by reminding people that experimenting on monkeys is anitquated circa 1920's science, used by businesses that aren't using good science. Good science uses computers, human cells (easily generated), and finally we can complete our move to to progressive science with stem-cell research. All and any of these methods are more accurate, more modern, and humane, and are used by real science. Business doesn't care and has no ethics. Science does care and has ethics.