DeSoto Caverns

Since our time is wrapping up here in Alabama, we are in a mad dash to do everything we haven't done yet that we wanted to do.  Luckily that only consisted of 2 big things. . . DeSoto Caverns, & the Prattville Creek.

We managed to do both over Memorial Day weekend.

DeSoto Caverns was absolutely amazing.  I'm SO glad we went.  For my AL friends, if you haven't gone here yet, GO.  It's great fun for the whole family.

The park is set up like a park & amusement park.  There's a gift shop & cafe, the cave itself, & then a bunch of rides/games to play.  It is on the pricier side, but well worth every penny & that's coming from a penny pincher.  We had a blast.

The cave was beautiful.  There are cave tours every hour & the guides are great fun.  The tour takes about an hour & includes a laser light show inside the cave.  It's nice & cool in the cave & absolutely gorgeous.  It was fun learning the history as well.

After exploring the caves, we got to spend several hours in the amusement park.  You daily pass includes a cave tour & 5 rides or attractions.  We did most of the attractions together as a family, but did some separate as well.

First we played 9 holes of mini golf.  It was hilarious.  There was a creek that ran through the middle of the golf course & I think we lost more balls to that creek than we actually got in the holes.

After golfing we did the go-karts.  They have 2 tracks: one for littler kids & one for adults/teens.  They are pedal go karts which makes it a challenge.  It was SO MUCH FUN.  Trek beat all the big "kids"of course.

The 3 boys did the smaller track with the smaller go-karts.  Bladen & Craiger were cruising around that track.  Canyon spent most of his time just trying to figure it out, but he had a blast doing it.

After the go-karts we were hot & tired & decided to eat our picnic lunch.  There were SO many beautiful places to eat lunch here.  There were waterfalls, picnic tables, playgrounds, an actual campground, etc.  It was great.  We had lunch & then explored the park more.  There were so many fun things to look at.

After lunch & exploring, we did our favorite attraction of the day & we were having SO MUCH FUN that we didn't take a single picture the entire hour we did it.  I feel bad I don't have any photo evidence of the fun we had, but I'll never forget it.  Our 3rd attraction was the squirt gun maze.  They have this massive maze (kind of like a corn maze, but with wood walls instead of corn stalks).  It takes forever to get through it as it is, but then they give each person a giant super soaker full of water & let us run & scream & squirt to our hearts content.  We were the only family allowed inside during our turn & it was amazing.  An hour later, we all emerged from that maze SOAKING WET with giggles & smiles galore.

After the squirt gun maze, we let everyone pick one individual thing to do that they really wanted to do.  3 of the kids chose gem digging, all the girls chose archery, & Bladen & Trek did the climbing wall.

Canyon, Craiger, & Taya got to dig around in a pile of sand for gemstones & crystals.  They enjoyed that immensely.  They all found a whole bag's worth of treasures.  After digging them up, they washed them in the creek & washed their feet as well.

After gemstones, the girls wanted to do archery.  Lo & I LOVE archery.  Taya's never done it before & Cadence enjoys trying it as well.  I grew up shooting bows & even did archery in school so I'm decent at it, Lo seems to hit the bullseye every time.  Archery is her favorite part of girls camp every summer & she's amazing at it.  We had fun shooting 10 arrows at bullseyes.  I hit 7 targets, Lo hit 6, Cadence hit 3, & Taya hit 1.  We did pretty good.

Bladen & Trek tackled the climbing wall.  It was an interesting wall because it wasn't a vertical wall, it was horizontal.  It was challenging for them though.  Bladen made it all the way to the end.  I was proud of him.

And finally for our 5th & final attraction, we did the cannon pirate fight.  It was crazy fun.  We were in a cage with 2 pirate ships facing each other.  Each ship had 4 air soft guns & buckets of nerf balls.  It was hilarious.  They gave us a full 30 minutes to just shoot each other with those nerf balls.  We played girls verses boys & by the end we were all exhausted.  There was a lot of strategic planning, laughing, balls in the face, & smiles.  It was the perfect ending to a fun day.

Overall, it was a fabulous day.  We had a blast & would go back in a heartbeat.  Go visit DeSoto Caverns.  It's amazing.