It’s funny how much a number means to a little girl when her
birthday is approaching. For Clara so
many things were going to happen when she turned four. She would be able to do so many more big
girl things and be so much taller and bigger.
We have been hearing about this birthday for the past month at least and
have been told she wants everything any commercial on TV happens to peddle to
children. Most of all, she wanted a
rainbow watch – not even sure if this was on the commercial or she came up with
this one on her own.
This year for Clara’s birthday and our anniversary we
celebrated in Yankton, South Dakota.
For those not familiar with the area Yankton is about a ½ hour from my
hometown. Next to Yankton is a very
large dam built on the Missouri River making it more touristy than other towns
in the area. I had a lot of fun going
around the area seeing different sites that I hadn’t seen in 20+ years and even
searching out new ones to explore like Devil’s Nest (abandoned ski resort which
my Urbex/Rurex loving husband found out was near and became one of the must
stops on our trip).
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| Devil's Nest Ski Resort |
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| Devil's Nest with Missouri River in background |
It’s always fun doing tourist things in times when they are
quieter – although we did run into plenty of attractions that closed beginning of
October. The Visitors Center that
overlooked Gavins Point Dam was completely empty to run around in and
enjoy. The fish hatchery gave us a huge
bucket of fish feed to take out to the rainbow trout in their ponds and
feed. The trout were in some cases over
a foot long and really made you want to catch one as close up as they would
come. The golf courses overlooking the
dam were also empty and picturesque.
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| Fishing with Grandma |
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| Feeding trout at the fish hatchery |
But enough about the overall trip we need to talk about the birthday girl and what she enjoyed most about the trip. Basically there were three things that made her birthday memorable: kitties, presents and balloons.
We stayed in a cabin across from Lewis & Clark State
Park and the office at the site had baby kittens – Clara would beg anyone and
everyone to go see the baby kitties with her.
Luckily Grandpa Brodersen has a soft spot for baby kitties also so he
was suckered more than anyone to trek up to the office and check out the
kittens with Clara (and also sometimes Grace).
We constantly heard about how cute they were and how they were SO
Adorable!!!!
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| Birthday girl and her favorite meal - breakfast! |
Finally balloons.
Not much explaining to do with this one as what kid does not love
balloons. I think we started with five
balloons in the pack – only one was pink though so that was the first of the
problems. Then they started popping and
I gave a couple away to a friend’s daughter. By the end of the trip – Clara was saying
goodbye to just one Mr. Balloony – thank goodness we convinced her to leave it
here and not have it travel back to Missouri with us.
So all in all it was a good time. One more highlight of the trip (besides the
beautiful fall weather) was walking the old Yankton Bridge from South Dakota
over to Nebraska. This bridge used to
be how we drove to Yankton but it has since been replaced and now is used for
pedestrians. It was over a mile walk to
one side and back and both the lower and the upper portions of the bridge are
open for pedestrians. The girls did
great walking the entire bridge – with the incentive of an ice cream cone if
they made it across and back.
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| The ice cream thumbs up! |
