Days Three & Four...

Days Three. Let's see. Where were we? Ah. Yes. On Day three we opted for a more low key day. We started in the Money Museum where the boys learned the word "numismatist" (coin collector). To be honest, we were rather taken by surprise by the extent of the collection and exhibits. The boys had fun searching for questions and finding answers to earn their "prize" at the end (a cool coin from Tanzania) but weren't as interested as Nathan and I in actually looking at everything...hence, we didn't see everything. :) We did, though, see a fabulous collection of gold coins (which was pretty amazing...at least a couple were worth millions!), some of the simply stunning medallion exhibit (seriously could spend a lot of time just looking at all of these...it was like a miniature art gallery), and the fun exhibit on the Good, the Bad and the Ugly featuring coins of different world leaders (be they good, bad or ugly...kinda funny and cool all at the same time). In the medallion exhibit, Asher thought this one looked like Dr. Doom from the Fantastic Four:

After the Money Museum, we headed to the Olympic Training Complex . We had a quick picnic lunch on the grounds (complete with an overly tame squirrel that the boys chased afterward) and took a tour of the facilities. I don't know that the boys were as impressed by everything, but I'm hopeful that having this experience will help them put things in perspective better when the Olympics start in a little over a week. The pool, for instance, impressed Noah who'd watched a good bit of the Olympic trials for swimming. He was able to put the two together and see that this is where the athletes train for that. The indoor shooting area was amazing, in that we were able to see the actual targets that these athletes shoot at...dude, that's incredible. In any case, one of the highlights to the boys was having this picture taken out front:

After all that, we decided to take a break from our daily swimming and went to see "Wall-E" in the theater instead. The boys were resistant at first (they're not huge theater fans...the scale freaks them out a bit) but, as expected, adored the movie and want to see it again (and again and again). I had to totally laugh at Micah, though. I was sitting next to him and throughout the whole movie he thought the girl robot's name was Evil (it's Eve) and kept shouting at her...pretty darn cute.

Day Four. The next day was much more full. We started early at Seven Falls. Managed to snag a pretty good parking spot so that we didn't have too far to hike to get to the main attraction. We took the elevator up to a viewing area (and pressed more pennies while we were up there) then headed down to actually climb to the top of the falls. Now, first of all, these falls were a bit low on water and less impressive than I'd hoped...but the boys, having not seen as many real waterfalls, thought they were awesome. Secondly, yes, it was a bit daring for us to attempt the climb with a two year old and a 7 year old who proclaims himself afraid of heights. But climb we did, and we made it just fine, though Nathan did end up carrying Micah part of the way. Not sure you can see all the 224 steps to the top of the falls here (this shot is taken from the observation deck at the top of the elevator), but I have enough depth perception issues that putting the camera away and concentrating on climbing were top priority. :)

At the top, we followed a little trail to another waterfall. The hike was nice:

Then, as inevitably happens, we had to climb back down those 224 narrow and steep stairs. That took longer than going up and Nathan ended up carrying Micah the whole way down, as I led the other two slowly. Handrails are our friends. :)

We did the picnic lunch thing just outside of Seven Falls then headed for Cave of the Winds. Our timing was great, btw. We left Seven Falls just as it was getting pretty busy and hot and arrived at Cave of the Winds in time to take cover inside the caves to miss getting soaked by the afternoon thunderstorm. Inside the cave, photography was obviously trickier but I managed to get this shot before our tour really got off and going:

Micah decided to become Mr. Independent inside the caves...insisting on walking on his own much of the way. So we were at the tail end of our tour and didn't hear as many of the details. But the boys liked it. So that was good. :) Back outside the cave, the storm now over, the boys discovered this fun activity:

Each of them purchased these bags of dirt/gravel that had a bunch of cool rocks/gems mixed in. They dumped the bags into these trays, washed the dirt away and collected their loot. It took a few trays to complete each bag and this was heaps better than the panning for gold, as they were assured a good outcome and got to keep the products of their labor. Noah loved it so much he splurged and bought himself a second bag. :) Good times.

Unfortunately, the evening laser show at Cave of the Winds that we'd planned on going to was canceled that night due to technical difficulties. The boys were pretty bummed, but the bags of rocks and the last night of swimming seemed to make up for it. 

So. Those were our third and fourth days. I'll wrap up our trip next time...