Happy B-day America

We woke up this morning at Robber's Cave (near McAlester, OK) and spent a few hours exploring the caves before the heat kicked in. The kids and Jessica retired to the lake and I hit a hiking trail around the lake which pert near killed me. It was hot and while the trail was excellently marked (blue spots on every other tree) sometimes, it simply wasn't marked. Also, it was a hiking trail and so there were quite a few areas that were totally unridable (requiring "scrambling" skills) but it was nice to get out on the bike on a trail. We drove home in time for "burgers and bullets" at the Huber's house (Lenore was there as was Julie Anderson) where we threw a half ton of lead into a dirt bank demolishing targets comprised of everything from toilets to effigies of B. H. Obama.

There were fourwheelers and I thought Winter had bought it when I looked up just in time to see her roll a small 4-wheeler in a horrific accident on flat ground. She was very banged up and is going to have some major bruising, but seems to have come through it with nothing permanent. Those little cheapo foreign 4-wheelers seem to be (in retrospect) too tall and not wide enough - a recipe for roll-overs. Our best guess is that Winter tried to hit the brakes while turning and got the rearend of the thing sliding to instigate the roll. I thought for sure that she had broken her back or something - it was really scary. She had a full-face helmet on and still ended up with a fat lip too. Wow.

When we finally got home this evening (at like 11p) we lit off the fire works that I found on the side of the road and they are the best fireworks I have ever lit. There were 4 or 5 successive volleys of 3 rapid-fire rockets that went up into the air 40 or 50 feet before exploding in fun colors and crackles. It was our own mini-fireworks show. I took care of the farm chores and unloaded the sub and it is bed time for this tired ol' dad.