Spelunking in Crystal Cave

Last Sunday we went to Kevin's parents' house for dinner. They made a pot roast that I would have loved to have been able to eat! But I stopped and got a salad on the way to ensure I wouldn't have a gallbladder attack :(

We found that our garden got fried by the heat over the course of the previous week, even with Ron watering it for us a few days prior!

But we still managed to harvest one final batch of peas, a few early cloves of garlic, basil, and some spinach.

After dinner Riley and Liv played Candyland:

Then we had sherbet for dessert before Liv got Riley to play kitchen with her: After serving all of us another full dinner worth of plastic food, Liv came around to collect all our dishes and assured us,

Riley will wash them!

We got home to find all the spots in our half of the parking lot full except for one, which was empty because our across the hall neighbor Ruth had struck once again:

Kevin insisted that he had enough and was going to say something to her when we got inside. But as we got upstairs we could hear the sound of her vacuum cleaner.

So he knocked super hard on her door to make sure she heard it. And then when she asked who it was he said it was her neighbor and he wanted to show her something.

They went back and forth a few times with her asking "can I help you?" and him insisting that he wanted to show her the picture of her park job.

But finally he assumed she wasn't going to open the door and so he said,

Look, can you just learn to park not like a jackass? Because it's really rude and it screws up the parking for the entire rest of the row. And if it happens again, we're going to the landlord.

Then we went inside our apartment and closed the door. And a minute later she knocked on our door and insisted that she hadn't been able to answer her door because she needed to get dressed.

So Kevin launched into his assault all over again, and showed her the picture, and again asserted how rude it is to park so poorly that you waste an entire second spot.

And Ruth played dumb and insisted that it wasn't "rude" because this was the first he was bringing it to her attention: It would only be rude if she did it again going forward.

Which of course Kevin thoroughly disagreed with and pointed out that he's been here more than a year now and has seen her park this way dozens of times and sometimes even get out of her car and then get back in to re-park because even she realizes how bad it is.

But she just kept doubling down on saying it wasn't rude unless she did it again. So he finally relented and said fine, whatever. And as they were going their separate ways he took the opportunity to tell her,

And stop leaving your trash in the hallway too!

She took offense at this and asked if he had proof.

I think maybe she thought he was talking about some specific incident with actual bags of trash or something. But just like with seeing her bad parking so many times now, we all know she seems to have trash bags tear open with odd frequency, and she'll just leave stray flossers or other pieces of trash in the stairwell and pretend they aren't hers even though it's only us and her on the second floor (and we know it isn't us.)

But needless to say Kevin took great delight in sending me a photo every day the rest of the week to show me who suddenly learned how to park:

I worked a 13 hour shift on Tuesday. And then fast forward to Thursday evening when I clocked out with 90 hours logged for this two week pay period.

So when I got home I told Kevin and Riley that I was done for the week and I was calling out the next day!

With a rare Friday off from work, I got to straighten up my desk and get some other things done around the house. And Kevin reached out to his mom to see if his parents were perhaps free for dinner.

Catherine told him that she had actually made plans earlier to have Kelly, Steve, and the girls come for takeout and we were welcome to come over as well.

So we did!

And when we got home later we found that Ruth had installed a webcam in her window facing the parking lot, and another one in the stairwell outside her door!

Pointed right at our door so that it could see inside our apartment every time we came and went!

I was livid and told Kevin I was going to complain to the landlord on Monday if she didn't at least angle it away from our door.

But surprisingly, he (Mr. Privacy of all people!) said he was pretty much fine with it:

If I made that much of an impression that she's either terrified of me or of repercussions from the landlord and she feels the need to cover her ass by recording herself parking perfectly from now on and never leaving crap in the stairwell again, I can learn to live with her seeing a little sliver of our empty living room on occasion. I'll consider that a fair trade.

Saturday morning Kevin and I decided we (and Riley) should take a road trip to Kutztown and tour Crystal Cave.

There is a 1.4 acre property in Boyertown that Kevin has been doing some research on and he wanted to see it in person, so we stopped there on the way to snap a few pictures:

Then we continued on to Kutztown:

As we got close I needed to get some gas and we were starting to get hungry for lunch, so we stopped at the Sheetz in Fleetwood to grab a bite and fill the tank.

We did not use the app, because we don't consider thinking a bad thing.

Then it was back on the road for just a few more minutes, until:

Halfway up the mountainsaid to the cave entrance I stopped to take this picture:

Then Kevin had me pose there so he could try to convey the altitude:

When we finally reached the top we found... the exit:

But a few minutes later the rest of our group arrived along with our guide, who introduced himself as Jim and said he was from Indiana.

We had to start with a 10 minute history lesson and some ground rules from a copy of an old VHS tape that was far older than any of us were.

But then we were off!

I will say however that none of our pictures even remotely convey the beauty or the magnitude of the cave. But we did the best we could, so enjoy :)

All the major food groups were represented. Here's chocolate soft serve ice cream, carrots, and iced strudel:

Jim said most younger groups insist on calling this stalagmite "the poop emoji":

And apparently this little puddle is the only standing water in the entire cave!

The ONLY bad part of the tour was this one woman who was there with her infant child that wouldn't stop crying, so finally the woman just flat out told me and Kevin,

I know he said not to touch anything, but whatever, anything that can stop her from crying. Right?

Aside from that though, everything was amazing. Well worth the $20 price of admission.

Afterwards we checked out the gift shop.

Riley wanted a gemstone tree, and Kevin couldn't stop looking at this giant smokey quartz formation that's the size of both his hands.

I fell in love with this bowl, a Gaia stone made of volcanic glass from Mount St. Helens, and a piece of green calcite.

Then just as we were getting ready to pay for those things, Kevin spotted these tiny figurines in a glass case. And we knew we had to get a hedgehog and a frog (and Riley chose a bunny).

As we got in the car to head home we did a drive past "the Kutztown property" just around the corner from the cave, because Riley had never seen it in person.

Then we pressed onward toward darkening skies:

Luckily we managed to pass through the storm in a matter of maybe 10 minutes.

Kevin took a few videos along the way:

This is on Route 78. We could actually see the curtains of rain coming down from the clouds in the distance!

And then just a few minutes later we were out of it:

When we got back home we stopped at Wawa for a quick and easy dinner, and then we relaxed in front of the television the rest of the night.

And Sunday was mostly a day of rest as well.

Somehow we only took four cat pictures this month, but they're pretty good ones!

And Sunday night I managed to snap some photos of the beautiful sunset: