Marble Falls FAT Trip

 A few months ago, Annie said something like, "You and Dad always say we'll do stuff, but then we never do!" I had one of those moments where I felt like I'm a horrible mother who doesn't keep her promises. But then I thought about it for two second instead of one and realized Annie was just being a normal, whiny kid, and she was wrong about me and Aaron. 

But...we still have been on a flurry of family adventures, I guess just to reassure myself that I'm not a horrible mother who doesn't keep her promises. Oh the guilt!

Our first trip was to Marble Falls, in the heart of Texas Hill Country. Should I capitalize that? People say it like it's capitalized. And it really was hill-filled. Fun to drive through. And the wildflowers were just starting to burst forth. It was a lovely weekend. 

We spent the night at a hotel that was right next to a Chili's. So we ate there out on the patio overlooking the "lake" (which Idahoans and Utahns would call a reservoir).

Then we went back to the hotel and let the kids swim at the pool. They basically had the place to themselves. And Aaron and I were able to have a lovely grown-up chat outside of the pool. I loved the kids so much when they told me they didn't care if I actually got in the pool or not. Aaron and I had fun chatting about our dream of going to live in Taiwan for 1-6 months sometime in the next five years. 

During the night, Scotty's live oak allergies attacked him! I knew they were due, and this was the night they hit. Early in the morning, I was going to go to Walmart to get him some meds, but instead I bought one pill for five dollars at the hotel front desk. It was totally worth it. That one claritin pill helped him a lot. Never over the next few weeks of allergies did medicine ever seem to help him as much as it did that night. Thus the quest for allergy relief continues. Luckily, he really is only afflicted for 3-6 weeks of the year. I mean, he's not as lucky as the rest of us who aren't affect at all, but some people have it worse. 

The kids wanted to swim again, and it was cold. But they had fun anyway. This time they had to compete with some adults for the hot tub. 

Our big adventure for the day was going to the Longhorn State Cavern. So we checked out from our hotel and spent a little time walking and driving around before our reserved time. 

Then we drove there and waited a little bit more before our reserved time. There were a few cool buildings to wander around in. This state park was a CCC project back in the day. Crazy to realize that something build in the 1920s is now a hundred years old!

Finally it was cave time! This is the big hole in the ground. That's where we were headed. 

It was a really cool tour! The CCC men had to clear out all the rock and rubble under here one load at a time. There were a few little bats that we saw. This was a type of bat that hangs out by itself instead of in a big, batty group. Natural social distancers.  

Our governor had just removed our mask mandate. And since this was a state park, they really couldn't force people to wear them. About half of the people didn't. You can see our family was pretty conflicted about it:) 

Just kidding. We wore our masks the whole time, except for this picture. It is an interesting time we live in. It's sad to me that masks have been such a divisive issue. Anyway... 

This was where the tour ended. The rest of the cavern is privately owned. I wonder what one does with one's own personal cave? The only think I can think of is hoard treasure. But actually, they held dances and even church down in these caves at various points in history. I thought that was interesting! 

We emerged! It was a fun time. I'm glad we went. It was totally worth seeing. At the end of the tour we walked around some more and saw some other pretty views. 

And we ended the trip with pie. And then we drove home and got pizza. There was a lot of food. And fun. And family. And adventure. It was a pretty great F(amily) A(dventure) T(ime) trip.