A week of Freedom

We started out my week of no school off right with FISHING!

Dad was supervisor to begin with.

 But we finally talked him into fishing too!  This is him pretending that he had a real big one. :-)

 But actually it was Mom who was the super fisherwoman of the day.  She caught the biggest fish. One of the cool parts of the morning was finding turtle eggs on the bank of  pond.

 This pond is 4 acres!  The guy who owns it, built it with a big CAT and said that it filled up in one Missouri rainstorm and has never been empty since.  I think my Dad was so jealous.  He would love this much water in Park Valley!

 Later that afternoon after attending a Missouri softball and baseball game, we decided to go hiking.  We went to Rock Bridge State Park.

 Dust and I in front of the natural bridge.

 Mom and Dad at Devil's Icebox. Sadly we couldn't go all the way to the entrance because it was closed off for the bats.  Apparently it is an endangered species and they were trying to protect them during their mating season. But it was still a fun hike.  This underwater cave is over 7 miles long!

 The rest of my week after Mom and Dad left was pretty boring.  Dustin still had school so I was home a lot by myself.  I read books, watched movies, stained the deck, played in a softball game, went miniature golfing, cleaned my house, baked some yummy goodies and such. But yesterday we had the chance to go to Ha Ha Tonka State Park down by Lake of the Ozarks.  We got to hike to this really cool old "castle."  It was built in the early 1900's by a rich Kansas City businessman that had always dreamed of having an old school English Castle.  It is in the middle of dense forest and the base structure is made entirely of rock.

 Sadly the castle was struck by lightning in the 1940's and was totally demolished. It was pretty cool to walk around!

 In the distance is the 80 foot tall water tower that was built to supply gravity fed water to the house.

 This was also destroyed by fire, but not from lightning.  It was destroyed by vandals in 1972.

 Dustin, Aaron and Lindsey!  This was a fun day trip to celebrate Lindsey's Birthday!!

 what a silly look....:-)

 Next we hiked down to this beautiful spring.  This spring water was pumped up the hill over over 300 feet to the water tower and then gravity fed to the castle.  It flows over 400 million gallons everyday and the water always stays at 54 degrees year round.

After this we went to a park and had a picnic lunch, then a little shopping at the outlet mall and back home to Columbia.  Overall it was a fun filled day of much laughter and enjoyment of the outdoors!  Now back to school on Wednesday and the beginning of my last semester of nursing school will be underway! :-)