Does anybody have a slim jim?

Troy has been harassing me with that line all week. Because one morning on vacation for spring break, we were in the little breakfast area of the hotel eating their free continental breakfast, and a guy walks in and says "Excuse me, does anybody here have a slim jim? I've locked my keys in the car." And everybody just kind of looks at each other and shrugs, but I say "Yeah, we do. In the car." Because, even after a moment to process what he said, I guess I thought he desperately needed a beef stick with his coffee and he couldn't get to his stash because he locked his keys in the car.

And, really? Is that such a stretch? But I apparently got his hopes up for no reason, and as he left to call a locksmith, Troy just looked at me totally astounded by my dinginess. (That doesn't read din-ji-ness, does it? Because I meant to say that I'm dingy.) Anyway, I've never heard of a slim jim before, except for the beef jerky. And I do know people who lose it if they don't get their Dr. Pepper, or some other vice, so I didn't think it was any big deal. Troy doesn't understand how I get through life.

But, YES! We got to go on a family vacation this year during spring break. We usually try to go somewhere, but last year we didn't. And it was kind of miserable, so I wasn't about to let spring break go by without our family taking a trip this year. As Kalyn gets older I want to squeeze in as many family road trips as I can. There will soon come a day when she refuses to go with us and I can't force her. Also, I am aware of trips we took when Kalyn was younger and I want to be sure we do the same with Alina. It's a disadvantage to having children 8 years apart. We took Kalyn to Mt. Rushmore the summer before 1st grade. So this year I planned a road trip to Mt. Rushmore for spring break hoping Alina could have a similar experience.

First, Kalyn had to spend a day in hunter's safety class.

By the way, this is a picture of her with a rabbit she shot while hunting with Troy this winter. I was impressed! We ate it, of course. I made Hasenpfeffer.


Isn't that cute? She just became interested in hunting lately and wanted her hunting license. So we signed her up for the class. It happened to fall during the first day of our spring break, which pushed an already restricted time schedule back one day. And we also took the weather forecast into consideration, not wanting to be at Mt. Rushmore in freezing rain. So we left on Monday. We toured some Kansas attractions I had been wanting to visit along the way. We had a really good day with excellent weather on Monday. We packed picnic food and ate at the the Eisenhower Presidential Library and birth home in Abilene as our first stop.




Then on to Rock City, near Minneapolis, Kansas.






Then to Lucas, Kansas to visit the Garden of Eden house. It was built by a Civil War Veteran who settled in Kansas and decided to build a log cabin out of concrete and surround it with all kinds of political and religious sculptures. All built for tourists. He is there on the property still in a coffin with a glass top. His body is mummified. Kalyn was creeped out by it all.





And then the girl who led the tour at the Garden of Eden mentioned that there was an artist named Erica Nelson next door who has the World's Largest Collection of the World's Smallest Versions of the World's Largest Things. And I knew of her, I'd seen her on TV, but I had no idea she was in Lucas. So we wondered over to her yard, where her traveling exhibit is parked, and visited with her.

This is a tree full of chairs, or a "chairy tree". You can see some have fallen to the ground.



And this is the world's smallest mural.

Below is one of her cars, the demon car.



And this is her traveling exhibit. She makes tiny replicas of roadside attractions that claim to be the world's largest ball of twine or what have you.


And then she gave the girls wooden nickels and we were on our way.

And THIS IS the world's largest ball of twine! Here I am admiring it. It's in Cawker City, Kansas. We stopped on our way into Nebraska.



And I'm going to leave this post here, because it's a lot of pictures to post at one time. And also because how can you top the world's largest ball of twine? Stay tuned for the rest of our trip later!