Bear Lake and Minnetonka Cave

One last road trip of the summer.  I checked three things off my bucket list with this one!  I'd never been to Bear Lake.  Everyone loves Bear Lake, and I had never been.  I've wanted to go for years and this year I made it happen.  I booked a KOA and told the boys to take the day off work and we drove up after football on Thursday.  Minnetonka Cave was only 30 minutes from the campground so we went straight there then came back and set up camp.  The cave was awesome.  The best part was that it was 40 degrees.  Everyone wore their jackets, but I was loving my tshirt.  Okay that wasn't the best part, but it sure felt wonderful.  It was actually really cool.  And even more amazing when we got the story of how 24 men developed this cave in 9 months with hand tools and dim light from a lantern.  There was around 440 stairs so by the time we went in and out we had climbed nearly 1000 steps.  We were starving after so we stopped for a snack at a cute roadside shack thingy and had grilled cheese and fries.  I had prepared tin foil dinners to cook on the fire so had a yummy dinner waiting for us.  We should've started our fire for as soon as we got to the campground, but Davis and Gator wanted to explore the campground and find where to rent these fun bikes they were seeing everywhere.  Well, we found them, Davis and Gator had a great time on the Banana Bikes.  Owen was too big so we rented a double bike thingy, ya that wasn't fun.  We took it to the store to buy wood then parked it for the remainder of our hour.  That thing was tough!  Dinner was late, but we were camping and didn't need to follow any schedule so we didn't mind.  Owen added a little time to dinner prep when he about sliced off his finger.  We really should've gotten it stitched up, but we went to the store and bought alcohol wipes, ointment, gauze, tape and bandaids.  We got it cleaned up and a couple hours later the bleeding stopped.  He's good now, but will have quite the scar.  Memories right??  Friday we woke up and went to the lake.  It was absolutely beautiful.  I could visit Bear Lake weekly every summer, it was amazing.  The water was clear and looked blue, and felt so clean and refreshing.  A nice lady we set up next to had rented a water trampoline for her kids, but they didn't even like it, so she invited us to play on it.  Davis and Gator swam out there and played on it for a bit, but all the kids were anxious for noon to roll around.  I had rented a jet ski for a couple hours, and they were excited to play on that.  I was scared to death at first, but I relaxed......a little.  Owen and Davis could've cruised around on that thing all day long, too bad I had only rented it for 2 hours.  They got every little bit of time out of the rental and I feel I got my moneys worth, it was awesome to see the kids have so much fun.  Another thing everyone talks about is the Bear Lake raspberry shakes.  That was our last stop.  Yummy!!  Our trip was so much fun, and there was a crazy piece of mail waiting for Owen when we got home.  His mission call came!!  It is real now.  He's going to open it tomorrow evening.