Sunday we went to Kickapoo Indian Caverns. No that's not a pun, that's what it's called. I
should have said TRIED to go. Seems that we weren't allowed to carry Eli in a backpack carrier
inside the cavern. So...there's a chunk of change that place isn't going to ever see as far as
I am concerned. And I just checked and it doesn't say ANYTHING about baby carriers on their
website. But brag about it being a FAMILY attraction. Yea right.

In all fairness, it was probably a good idea that we didn't go. Eli would have been doing the
screaming pterodactyl call the whole time we were in there. You can only feed that kid so many
crackers before he loses interest and decides it's more fun to scream.


So we ended up going to the Effigy Mounds National Monument, just north of McGregor and
Marquette, IA. They have a really nice museum there that has all sorts of artifacts there.
There are three mounds right outside the door of the visitors center, but to see the rest,
they have a trail that leads to some of the animal shaped mounds that are intact and
beautifully maintained.


So we see the trail and it becomes obvious that the only two of us that are going to be able to
do much hiking, is Ian and me. So Margaret suggests that we take a walk up a ways to see
what's up there.


So we start up the trail which had a pretty good incline already. We make it up the hill and
around the first curve, and decide to keep going a ways. There are people coming down and they
are saying how beautiful it is at the top, so I encourage Ian to keep going with me, to which
he agrees. Except that the trails are getting steeper and steeper. He tries to poop out on me a
few times, but I told him that we only needed to go a little further.


After what seemed like forever, we make it to Eagle Rock, where we take this shot. Turns out we
had only hiked six tenths of a mile. It felt like we were at least that high up! We hadn't
even come across any more mounds yet. They were further north up the trail.


It was at that point that the boy had enough with the hike and we started back down the hill.
All in all, we walked a nice 1.2 mile, father and son hike. Had we kept going to the end and
turned around and come back, it could have been a 7mi hike. Maybe someday. But there's gotta be
a happy medium of Ian's old enough/daddy's young enough before we try that again. ;)