Mother's Day 2013 Adventure: Wapsipinicon State Park, Part I

On Sunday, Andrew, Livie, and I went on a special Mother's Day adventure. We went to Wapsipinicon State Park. Livie is a Girl Scout and is going to her first overnight "camping" trip this summer, so she's now excited about finding other camping opportunities. When I'd ordered sleeping bags for the two of us (it's a girl/adult overnight thing), she really, REALLY wanted to do more camping than just the one overnight trip we have planned.

So I found that there's camping at the Wapsipinicon location (either RV or tent). Before buying a tent and deciding, "Yes, we'll do some additional camping this summer," I wanted to see what this state park was like.

My plan, which I'd not told either of them, was to drive out to the State Park after church and brunch on Mother's Day. I was just going to plug the address into the Garmin and have Andrew follow the directions. The park is just about 20 miles away from us (maybe a bit less), so it wouldn't take too long to get there. It would be a nice Sunday drive, and we'd be able to get out and enjoy the sunshine and fresh air while we were there.

Throughout the whole drive to the park, Livie was trying to guess where we were going. She kept asking, "Daddy, am I right?" but of course he didn't know. I kept giving her hints, and that kept her entertained. I think that once we were close, though, and finally arrived at the exit off U.S. 151, Andrew saw the "State Park" sign and arrow, and figured out where we were going.

Anyway, I'll let the photos do the "talking," so here they are. (Upon looking at some of them, a few look slightly blurry, so my apologies.) There are a LOT of them, so sit back and get comfy!

Here's the view from the car as we're driving into the park.

Livie's posing in front of one of many rock formations. She LOVED seeing cool geology in person!

 We pulled over to explore a bit, and walk around, because we'd seen a couple signs pointing to "Ice Cave" and "Horse Thief Cave." This photo is in front of the entrance to the "Ice Cave." As you can imagine, it's probably very cool in there. 

We didn't have flashlights, so we only went in a short distance, because it was dark. It was cool, what little we did see, though. We vowed that next time, we'd bring flashlights.

It's dark! See? You can just see to the curve in the rock and it's pitch black from there. That's about as far as we went. 

We've turned around and are looking at the cave entrance. 

Livie wanted to take one more peek in there with Daddy. They'd only gone a couple steps into the entrance when Livie decided she wanted to turn around and come back out.

 We're taking a bit of a stroll near the creek. Livie is telling us she loves nature and she wishes we could've brought a canoe. 

There's a little hole/cave type of area up towards the top of the rock formation in the distance. Andrew was sure he saw an animal (he thinks it was an owl, maybe?) peaking out momentarily before turning around and going back to sleep (or whatever it was doing). He and Livie are trying to see if they can spot it again. (No such luck.)

After investigating the moss on this rock here, Livie told me very seriously, "Moose eat moss."

And this is where I've decided to stop for the day. There are a TON of photos - too many to share in one post.  While I've chosen only about 20 photos to share (in two posts) out of the scores of photos I took, I think this is enough for now. So I think I'll go ahead and split this Mother's Day Adventure post into two, and share the rest in a second post tomorrow.