hideout

tom and i planned a mystery adventure for sam and louie last night...
and it went off without a hitch!

the entire way on highway 44, sam continued to ask, "where are we going?"
he started guessing...six flags? no. fireworks? no. cracker barrell? no.

and louie, he just took a nap.

then we arrived.

it was awesome. in fact sam and louie kept saying it over and over again!

we were the only family on the tour...
our private tour of the cave and jesse james' hide out!

the cave version of the grand canyon...
hard to tell with the poor photography skills.

during the first part of the tour, louie held my hand the entire time.
then after this point, he was walking ahead of us with sam!

it was so much fun! re-learning about stalactites and stalagmites.

this formation is pretty cool...the round pieces were formed underwater.
we had to walk up 58 steps to get to this room. the boys counted every single one!
 

i forgot how much water is in the cave.
this formation has water constantly running down the side of it!
we also received many "cave kisses" (water dripping on your head) during the tour!

the light show at the end was pretty cool too...

in an old school, hearing the tour guide flip all of the switches to the music of

"god bless america" and the missouri waltz! :)

after the tour, tom showed the boys where we had walked in the cave.

and as we were in the gift shop purchasing fudge (i am always a sucker for fudge and kettle corn), an activity book about caves and a crystal growing kit (rock candy to come shortly)...a bat flew over our head! yikes! i'm glad we were leaving at that point! however, tom so nicely pointed out that it's no different than sitting in our front yard watching the bats fly into our neighbor's house...