Vacation 2007 continued

Day 3: Baraboo

We woke well-rested and before Cameron! We lingered over a breakfast of oatmeal while Cameron played with his new friends, then drove to the Country Bumpkin U-Pick Farm. We picked strawberries and raspberries, which we enjoyed for lunch that day.

After berry picking, we decided to go on a train ride. There were two options but I was sure the Riverside and Great Northern Railway was the way to go. When we arrived, Cameron gasped appreciatively at the miniature train. "Mommy, are we going to ride THAT?" "No," I chuckled. "That's just a model. We're riding on a real train." But as we looked around the station, it slowly dawned on me that there WAS no "real" train. We rode the mini-train, which actually turned out to be kind of neat. After the Moosejaw Pizza disaster of Day 2, we wisely decided to allow Cameron a nap on this day. We went back to the cabin, grilled a delicious dinner of salmon and made a peach and raspberry cobbler with our fresh berries.

After dinner, we bribed Cameron into going fishing on Devil's Lake by offering the best fisherman a prize -- a cookie. At the lake, David fished, Cameron threw rocks in the lake and I held his pole. Cameron did occasionally take over his pole when my arms got "too tired" and I needed his "big muscles." The prize was eventually changed to a "best listener prize" which was awarded to Cameron.

Back at camp, we made a fire. Our neighbors had left but Cameron quickly made friends with a little Polish girl who spoke no English. She was fascinated by Cameron's light-up tennis shoes and Cameron loved that she allowed him to talk non-stop. When we explained to Cameron that she spoke another language, he quickly developed three signals to communicate with her -- a wave for "Hi" or "Bye," a shrug for "What? Where? When? Why?" and taking her hand gently for "Please, join me at our campfire."

Day 4: Baraboo

Another day of sleeping in! We enjoyed yogurt with fresh berries for breakfast, then headed to Devil's Lake State Park to geocache. The first cache, Devil's Curse, was a short hike followed by an exciting climb up quartzite boulders. The cache was well-hidden among the rocks and Cameron was thrilled when he, through some parental staging, found it. He mulled over his choice for ages before decided on the plastic pirate coins.

The next cache was on the West Bluff Trail, on the opposite side of the lake. We trotted optimistically across the parking lot to the trailhead. Cameron spotted the aptly named "Tumbled Rocks" trail shown in the photo below and instead wanted to check it out. We walked down Tumbled Rocks away and then David said, "Maybe Tumbled Rocks meets up with the West Bluff and we could just do a loop." I consulted the map and said, "Yeah! This trail is 1 mile and then it meets up with West Bluff, which is 1.5 miles." No problem! Cameron walks that far at home all the time, we thought. We neglected, however, to note the descriptions of trail difficulty at the bottom of the map . . . (Note ominous foreshadowing.)

I was already tired when we reached the end of the "easy" Tumbled Rocks trail. There, we found that West Bluff Trail headed up, up, up. Stairs, steep trail, stairs, steep trail . . . it seemed to go on for forever! Cameron was amazingly, impressively resilient, even running parts of the incline. Everyone we passed looked simultaneously impressed to see a 3-year-old on a tough trail and amazed that any parents would be stupid enough to try the trail with a 3-year-old. The view at the top of the trail (seen in below photo) was fabulous, but depressing as we now had to go down, down, down a very steep path. David retrieved the cache and brought back a magnifying glass for Cameron. Finally, we made it back to the parking lot. I was so exhausted, I could barely talk as we at our picnic lunch. David and Cameron built sandcastles on the beach while I sat on a towel in stupor.

In the evening, we went to the free and very small Oschner Zoo where we saw goats, a bear, prairie dogs, and monkeys. As we left, we saw a buck and doe that had four fawns. In this photo, Cameron and a fawn check each other out!

We ended the evening with a well-deserved ice cream.

Tune in later to hear about Days 5 and beyond!