Sunday

Sunday was much more eventful than Saturday. We got up, had breakfast, got ready for church and then had lunch. The speaker was was awesome. I'll post about it later. After lunch, we laid Anthony & Zeke down for a nap and Grandma Sandy stayed with them so we could take the bigger kids. We drove about an hour to Custer State Park and went on a cave expedition. The tour only cost $4.00 apiece for the kids and $8.00 for Steve and I, and we didn't even have to pay to enter the Park.

The tour was listed as strenuous and it definitely was! We opted for the historical tour as opposed to the regular scenic tour and I think the kids really thought it was awesome. We had to take a long path and about a hundred steps just to get to the old cave entrance. Once there, the ranger, who was dressed in the park ranger uniform of the 1930's, met us and took us into the mouth of the cave. We all had lanterns since that part of the cave was completely natural and had no lights or real walkways. A little way in, one of the girls on the tour with us started to freak out a little so the guide left the rest of us and took her back out.

It's probably good she left when she did because the cave got much smaller and darker after that. We were completely in the dark except for the lanterns of the 15 of us on the tour. The farther we went in, the more difficult it became. The cave had old wooden steps that they called statters because they were steeper than stairs but not quite a ladder. Most of them were about as steep as a step-ladder. Imagine desending on a step ladder into a hole into complete darkness while trying to hold a lanterns. The steps would go one way and then abruptly turn another for a few hundred feet almost strainght down. I went in front of Taylor carrying her light and mine so that she could kind of scoot down on her butt. It was pretty intense but so worth it! The tour lasted about an hour and a half and had about 700 steps.

Riley even got to see a bat. He wanted to see more but I told him it was a compromise. The girls didn't want to see any and he wanted to see a whole cave full so God gave us a view of one cute little bat to make everyone happy!