Our family celebrated the Fourth of July on the road this year. My Aunt Kathy was turning 60 on Independence Day so the whole family went to Idaho to celebrate with her. We couldn't get a ton of time off from work so we had to leave late on the evening of the 3rd and drive most of the night, but we made it.
We had the birthday party on Friday night and then had all day Saturday to wander around showing the kids all of the cool stuff that I used to go do when I was little. The first thing that we did was stop at the World Birds of Prey Center. I used to love to go there when I was a kid. My kids loved it, too.
These were some of the birds that the kids liked best.
They loved to see all of the cool displays inside the center. They had fun trying on the "bird wings" to see what it would be like to have wings like and eagle.
After a quick stop for lunch we headed out to the Warhawk Museum in Nampa. Paul was in hogs heaven, but the kids were getting tired by this point, so we didn't get to stay too long.
I thought that this stop was really fitting considering the holiday we celebrated the day before.
On Sunday we left Boise and drove to Bear Lake. It took us another full day of driving, but it was worth it. On Monday we went to Minnetonka cave. It's a bit of a hike, but we all managed it.
Inside the cave there are tons of stalactites, stalagmites, and columns. It was awesome.
There were also 444 stairs inside the cave, going up and down as you went further in. We went all the way in and all the way back out, for a total of 888 stairs. We all were tired and really sore when it was over.
Later that day we took the kids to swim in the lake. This was their first time at a real beach. They had a blast swimming, looking for shells, and building sand castles.
We brought home a bucket full of small snail and mussel shells. I am going to get a glass bottle to put them in so that we can remember the trip.
We finally made it home on Tuesday. It was a crazy amount of driving, but it was really fun.
