Day 5: On the Road & Bass Pro

Wednesday morning it was time to say good-bye to our resort.  We were loaded up and ready to leave by 8am.  

On our way out, we posed for a picture by the big fish.

There were several of these types of crossings throughout the resort.  For us, it was hilarious because we have one of these at Seth's parents' farm.  And we call it a Missouri crossing.  And here we were, in Missouri at a classy resort and they had three or four of them!

Since we were so close to Arkansas, we had to drive there just to say we did.  We only went about one mile into Arkansas, but it still counts as a state visited.  

Just a look at the scenery in Missouri.  It is just as dry there as it is in Iowa.  But they don't have the corn and bean crops suffering like we do.  It is their pasture that is dire need of moisture.

As a "reward" for sitting through a two hour spiel about the resort's time share, we received $100 in Bass Pro Gift cards.  And conveniently enough, the largest Bass Pro is located in Springfield, on our way home.  We stopped for a bit to look around and spend our gift cards.

The children were thrilled with the live fish, turtles and gar.

The coyote however is not real.

But the alligator was very much real.

From Springfield, it was time to head home.  For our listening enjoyment in the van, we've enjoyed Focus on the Family's Adventures in Odyssey series.  We have also discovered Hank the Cowdog's audio CDs.  Pretty hilarious and the children (and Seth and I) loved them.  We also had a wide assortment of Veggie Tales and praise/worship music for audio enjoyment.  And you can't travel without playing the license plate game,  I Spy and the alphabet sign game.

We came home with a little bit of cash left over.  That's always a good feeling.  Our whole vacation was carefully budgeted with money for hotels, gas, restaurants, groceries and admission fees.   We spend a year saving up a little each month so we can enjoy this time as a family.  We are grateful to our neighbors for checking the chickens/rabbits/pigs/cats while we were gone.  The cows were content in the pasture and Seth's dad checked them a couple times.  We are thankful for the few days that we could get away and have some fun as family.

We only got a few souvenirs while on vacation.  The children all had their own money to spend and they had to learn not to spend it all at the first shop.  They all did pretty well with some direction from Mom "to really think about if they wanted it".   I bought a few books at the Laura Ingalls Wilder gift shop.  We got two decks of cards and I got a few spoons to add to my collection.   I think the best souvenir of all is all the pictures I took.

One last funny picture:  Things were getting a bit wild in the van  on the way  home when the children were making "tooting" noises with their arms.  But they had so much fun doing it!