Auntie and Nephew Day

Last Saturday morning, I met my dad and sister to watch my nephew Keith play in one of his baseball games.  The temperature was very warm and it was getting increasingly humid as the minutes ticked by.  This was the first game I have seen of his in about two years.  He's improved a lot since then.  Keith knew him and I were going to hang out and do something after his game but it was a surprise. 

See the ball?

Crack!

We went to Keith's house after the game and I told him where we were going.  He was excited.  I had been to this place when I was 10 years old but hadn't been back since.  I told him it would be a long car ride so we stopped at McDonald's so he could get his very first smoothie for the ride there.  We got on I-94 and headed east into Wisconsin about 20 miles and then another 13 miles south and east until we finally reached this place:

Have any of you been to Crystal Cave?  It's in Spring Valley, Wisconsin.  I had some fond memories of this place when I was a kid and while some of my memories were sketchy, I was interested in seeing how it would be to see this place as a kid and again as an adult almost 25 years later.  We went on an hour long tour and at first I wasn't sure Keith was going to like it.  The tour comprised mostly of couples and there was one kid about a year old.  We were told right away that we probably wouldn't see any bats on the tour because they typically hang out in the cave in the winter.  I was kinda hoping for bats to get that full-cave experience.  The cave wasn't really as I remembered.  I remember giant stalagmites and stalactites when I was a kid and no, it really wasn't like that.  After seeing a stalactite that was about a few inches long and told that was about 70 years of "growth", I knew that I hadn't seen giant ones when I was a kid.  Every once in a while, we would have a drip from above us fall onto us which I thought would be water but it was carbonic acid, which erodes the caves over hundreds and thousands of years.  The acid is weak and doesn't hurt your skin but it's also in pop/soda so maybe you'll want to think twice as to what it's doing to your stomach. :)  

The last cave room we went in was the coin room.  I remember this room when I was 10 and I thought it was amazing.  Not so amazing as an adult, but still neat.  I remembered shiny pennies all over the walls to the point they were just glowing everywhere.  Reality today showed me that it was a bunch of different coins on the walls in a way smaller room than I remembered.  If you have a coin and you put in on or into the wall of the cave and it stays, you will have good luck for the day.  If it falls, then I don't know what.  Bad luck maybe.  We both put our coins on the wall and they both stayed.  It was extreme coincidence that one of my friends was taking her daughter that same day and her boyfriend said that they had changed the penny room since we were kids.  I guess that makes me feel slightly better about my lack of memory or the fact that I glamorized that room.

After the cave tour, I let Keith pick out a couple of small gift shop items and then we picked up a mining/panning kit.  We took a bag of sand and sediment and went outside to pan for gems in the running water outside.  The humidity outside was horrendous and it was so hot.  The best thing we did was to go underground in a cave that is 48 degrees in the middle of a heat wave.

Keith loved the whole experience.  I asked him what his favorite part was and he said, "the cave".  :) 

The coin/penny room 

My favorite part of Keith are the adorable freckles on his nose.  So cute.

The day wrapped up with having a late lunch at Champps in Woodbury and stopping at Gordman's and JoAnn's for some quick browsing and getting Keith a couple of coloring posters.  I just love this kid and it the whole day was lots of fun.