I got up before the sun this morning to edit pictures and write as I knew once we got home I would have zero time for such things (I was right!!). We had no big museums left and no awesome attractions to hurry to get on the road to see. We had one of those rare days where we could be spontaneous and do whatever the kids wanted. Of course after breakfast the kids wanted to play campball. This was quite possibly our last game so we wanted it to be a good one. While we were waiting on Grammie, Dave and Ryan decided to have a campball duel. It didn't end well for either of them!
We picked teams - Brayden, Laney, and me against Dave, Grammie and Ryan. We'd had trouble the entire trip trying to make the teams somewhat even. The adults sometimes ran a little extra slow to help with that, but these darn kids are so competitive sometimes it didn't matter what we did (or didn't!)!
All the players were finally connecting with the ball and the game was heated. Team Grammie was beating us pretty bad so I was trying to relax the rules a little bit for Laney but Ryan called me on it. We had to forge ahead and attempt to win fair and square.
Team Grammie ended up winning in a big way so we practiced being good sports and shook hands when we all really just wanted to go throw them in the lake. These pictures crack me up today as both of these boys are no longer furry!
On our way out of the park, we stopped by the visitor's center because I'd noticed a discovery center next door. The kids were excited to explore and they ended up learning quite a bit about the Trail of Tears. We also learned about many of the plants and animals native to the area as well as the geology from the past million years or so.
Once the kids got their buttons for finishing their ranger books we got on the road for our last long drive. Our drive was about 6 hours and we only stopped for gas. It wasn't as bad of a drive as Oklahoma or northern Montana, but I was more than thrilled it was the last one of the trip. We arrived at our next spot at dusk to set up one more time and have dinner. We were situated on a lake once more with a nice view of jumping fish!
I spent some time reorganizing a few things in the car we had haphazardly stuffed in unstrategic places. We settled down in our tents with countdowns from the kids. They were down to how many hours it would be until we got home.
