Batty

The night before the boys and I headed back to Arkansas, we went to Mason, Texas, to see the bats. The bat cave is a Nature Conservancy operation. The Bat Cave has millions and millions of bats.
Becky and Stephen and the kids went, as well as Tommy, Daniel, Sam, and I. When they learned that we were a group of home schoolers... they refunded our entry fee! We told them we were not there officially as a home school group, but the docent insisted! Cool!

The cave is down seven+ miles of dirt/caliche/ stone road. The road crosses several cattle guards, and a couple of (dry while we were there) creek beds, and finally, the James River. You have to drive across the river. In the water. As in... there is not a bridge. We couldn't judge the depth of the water, and I was afraid my little Toyota would flood out or wash away. So I parked on the side of the road, and rode over in Becky and Stephen's truck.
As it turned out, the water is not deep, and there is a solid rock bed where the road crosses. A smaller car than my own made it across without problems.
We saw the bats exiting the cave like a constant stream of smoke, swirling up, up, and up. They just kept coming. A red fox put in an appearance, as well as a hawk. Tommy got a great picture of the hawk, which we are hoping may win a contest for photography. He was using Becky's nice camera.

The next morning, the twins and I headed back to Arkansas as Ben and Paula and Tommy headed off to their jobs. I was going to show pictures of the trip to my Mom... but I couldn't find my camera.
After me fretting all week, Tommy found my camera yesterday! It was in the front floorboard of Becky's truck, where it had apparently fallen from my purse when I left my car by the riverside.
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The past week has been fairly quiet. Daniel and Sam are working a LOT between their job at the Wooden Spoon and our neighbor Anthony preparing his tractors for the Tired Iron of the Ozarks Tractor show coming this weekend.
Thanks for reading!