After a rather leisure breakfast, it was time to get down to business and give Jax his first official "big boy" bath. He did seem to enjoy it - or at least not mind it at all! The remainder of our morning was spent repacking...luggage, cooler, car (which naturally we put off until the monsoons returned!)We decided since it was already noon that we should stop for lunch somewhere (since our original plans of having a picnic were literally a "wash out"). By the time we got all our ducks in a row, Gerry just made an executive decision to pull into the next little restaurant he saw. As luck would have it, he found a perfect place - CJ's in Camdenton. If you are ever in this neck of the woods (and I highly recommend it!) you should find this place. It's nothing fancy but real homey - the food is inexpensive, plentiful and delicious (I had the pork tenderloin sandwich and savored every bite!)
While we ate, we revised our plans (once again). Tramping around in the rain at Ha Ha Tonka State Park didn't have quite the allure it might have, so we opted instead to find Bridal Cave and Thunder Mountain resort (?) which was only a few miles away. Privately owned, it's everything you'd probably expect from a family-owned-and-operated tourist site (trap?) but we
decided to go ahead and check out the cave there. It is a "living" (though with what all they allow there - touching, food wrappers, garbage, etc. I'd be surprised if any additional formations are still occurring) cave and the path leads about 1/4 mile back into the cave. As near as I can tell most of Missouri is on top of caves (so I'd be pretty careful about putting in any underground utilities here!) Jax seemed to enjoy his first spelunking experience (okay so he slept through it entirely!)
After the cave, it was Jax's turn for attention so while Jenny fed and changed him, the guys tried their hand at sluice mining. For only $8.99 they bought a bag of "paydirt" and mined it in the sluice mill there. The result bag of "gems" will be used as a downpayment on Jax's college education 
(though I'm not sure how far he can go on this bag of quartz and pyrite - unless he's going to be a geologist!)Because the weather had finally cleared up for the afternoon, we then headed to Ha Ha Tonka State Park to check out the castle ruins there. Although I checked out the various signs and literature, I never could figure out 1) why anyone would build a big, ol' stone castle here (a mansion, sure - the views were spectacular, but a stone castle?) and 2) how the heck stone burns? (the entire place - castle, carriage house, water tower...all stone structures...completely burned down in Oct. 1942).
Finally it was time to head off to "Caveman BBQ" - a place I read about while at the WorldMark resort. I'm always up for unique and adventurous meals and this sounded perfect: a BBQ restaurant INSIDE a cave! How cool does that sound? There weren't really any good directions to the place (one reviewer said you just had to call them when you got in the vicinity and have them "talk" you in) but Capt. T programmed it into TomTom and away we went. (Now I should tell you that our TomTom averages better than 75% at finding places we already know where they are but I haven't been particularly successful at getting anywhere else I want to be.) Travis however has the magic touch and it wasn't too long before we arrived at our destination.
Timing is afterall everything and we arrived to be pretty much at the head of the line for the shuttle up to the cave entrance. The vans had their side mirrors pushed in - with good reason. The route to the entrance was extremely narrow, bordered on one side by mountain and the other side by cliff or the occasional tree. At the top, the shuttle stopped and we got into an elevator for the ride to the restaurant. I sort of thought the elevator would go down into the cave, however, we went up a couple of stories and it opened into the "waiting area" for the restaurant. We were seated in the back of a very large cave (the restaurant was a bit confusing - diner tables and chairs and the occasional booth with red carpet, a guy playing the piano and, Jax's favorite part, a waterfall). The waterfall was totally mesmerizing for Jax and he couldn't be bothered with eating, etc. while watching and listening to it.Although originally this was the Caveman BBQ, it had changed ownership six months ago and is now "The Cave Restaurant" featuring a seafood/Italian menu, which was a little disappointing but still delicious (especially the blackberry cobbler dessert!). Then it was time to head back down to the shuttle and back to our car.
Now if you find this place on a map, it really doesn't look like it's too terribly far from I-44, the highway back to Jenny & Travis' place and we were all set to do a little backtracking to make that happen. But Capt. T plugged in the info to TomTom and figured out that we were only 20 minutes away from home if we didn't back track. Skeptically, we agreed to follow his directions and started off in the dark down a little dirt road that kept getting smaller and smaller (I've seen larger hunting trails!). Just about the time we were absolutely convinced we were lost, there appeared the first of several smaller highways ultimately leading us to where we wanted to go...and if we hadn't wanted to check in first at our hotel, we would have arrived exactly as TomTom predicted at 8:45 pm! Score: Travis & TomTom 2, us 0!
later, tw
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