Grandpa Haddock & Lukas ~ overlooking the fall colors in Eureka Springs on Saturday.Lukas & I spent the weekend in Eureka Springs with Nanna. She was there for an Arkansas Optometric Association convention. Lukas & I were along for the ride. We left Little Rock on Friday about 5:30. BAD timing. It was 7:00pm when we arrived in Conway. After a stop at Wal-Mart and Back Yard Burgers, it was 8:30 before we got on our way. We pulled in at the
Best Western Inn of the Ozarks about midnight. Lukas had slept most of the way, so he wasn't in the mood to get into bed.
Nanna had to get up early and head to the convention to man her table, but I got to lounge around watching Lukas play. The hotel room was nice and child-friendly. Not much for him to get into. We finally got dressed and went to check out the convention around 11am. Nanna got to show off her "handsome dude" to some of the people she talks to on the phone every day.
Uncle Kenny and Grandma & Grandpa Haddock drove down from Purdy, MO to eat lunch with us. Uncle Kenny didn't get to come to Lukas' birthday party because he was attending his Aunt Celia's 100th birthday party - wow! So it worked out perfectly for them to meet us for lunch. After lunch we checked out the hotel's "playground". At first it appeared to be only a swing set with 4 rocket swings (very old). Eventually we noticed the monkey bars that blended in with the chain link of the tennis court. The hotel also has miniature golf under a covered area. Lukas crawled around there and found a tunnel/tube thing with steps on one end and a slide on the other. I went through and tried to get him to follow. Grandpa had to get in with us and help him over the level changes. Later, he climbed the steps and went through the whole thing by himself, even went down the slide.
Lukas, Nanna, & I went out for dinner and then headed to the
Turpentine Creek Wildlife Refuge for a hayride and haunted "Trail of Terrors". We saw the big cats in their dark cages and then stood in line for about 2 hours for the ride. That was not exactly what I had envisioned. Lukas was such a good boy - he went back and forth between me & Nanna about a million times, but there were no tears. He wore his spider costume and was admired by all. They hayride was through the woods, and then when we came into a clearing, they turned off the tractor headlights and in the distance you could see the "Trail of Terrors". I was thinking about how I was going to have to tote my heavy kid all the way through the trail more than I was worried about it being scary. I managed to sit him on the diaper bag and that took off some of the weight. The trail was good, but not too scary. They put a lot of work into it for sure. The best part was when we walked over squishy ground, AKA a fresh grave. We think they buried a mattress in there or something. Lukas lost his hat on the trail, but it was later recovered.
That was about all the site seeing we did in Eureka. We got up and out of our room at 9am Sunday morning and headed back home.
Click here for the Eureka Springs pictures.
a spider's gotta work
