So to celebrate Baby Lily's first full day of being one year old (while wearing the same kind of shirts that I always wear), we decided to have a Father's Day cookout. My father's favorite thing to do is to buy giant pieces of a cow so he can chop it up and cook it. I haven't eaten steak in probably close to three years, but hey...let's see what happens. We even had colorful steak colored plates and corn colored plates. Baby Lily is pretty neutral about steak.
Before we knew it, it was time to go back home so we could get back early enough to get a good night's sleep before work the next morning because clearly I'm a good and responsible employee...wait...what's that? We should take a long detour to go on an adventure?! Let's go!
Now for years, I've heard rumors and legends of a gigantic outdoors/hunting/fishing Mecca with a "mountain" inside the store. Said mountain is rumored to be covered with taxidermyed animals and be really awesome. I had never actually seen, much less been to one of said stores because they only exist in the middle of nowhere. Frankly, I doubted their existence and was thoroughly skeptical of their awesomeness. Well, I'm not ashamed to say when I'm wrong. These stores do exist, they are every bit as awesome as the legends say, and they are named Cabela's: The Greatest Store in the Whole World. My camera isn't capable of capturing the size and awesomeness of this store (no camera is), but here's my attempt at documenting taxidermy mountain. It was only fitting that we went here today since it was Father's Day and Nicole wanted to be with her bear family (they eat more meat than my family does). Here she is with her bear dad. All jokes aside...this place is amazing. They have real albino trout swimming around the floor, more guns than The Matrix, and for real sniper outfits. I've never seen so many guns in one place, and I've been to gun shows. Now I'm no gun expert, but I do know that this is the biggest sniper rifle you can get in Call of Duty, and you can buy one at this store. The taxidermy was like going to the Natural History Museum, but even more and better. I mean, they had an elephant, and a lion that is sad because it dropped its toy. There's also an art gallery-esque display of atypical antler configurations that was really incredible. Don't get me wrong, I'm not a hunter (I did however buy that gun lighter), and I'm totally into animal rights and respecting nature (I'm sure you've noticed this trend if you've read my blog before), but if you're thinking that this place is unfair to animals, you'll be glad to know that they have a taxidermyed human on display too. I can't even talk about all the awesomeness in this store. I feel like I could be there all day and still not see everything, but a few things I did document...a huge arcade shooting gallery like the one I used to go to at the mall when I was a kid, every kind of hobo pie maker ever invented (except they were out of stock of the kind we wanted), and the biggest fish Nicole ever caught. Really though, I'm pretty sure my absolute favorite things in the whole place were the fish in the zoo-scale aquariums. It was like the zoo or Sea World, but instead of weird tropical fish no one cares about, they were giant versions of the fish that I try to catch (but never do). Nicole liked the tanks so much that she decided to go for a little swim before we left.
On the way home, we continued our bear adventure when we found the soda equivalent of moonshine in a vending machine at a shady rest stop. It was birch soda with no company labeling, and facts about bears on the back of the bottle. Obviously it was delicious. I didn't really take any pictures other than that until we got home to install our new real* bear rug. Look how ferocious he looks! Goodnight!
* "Real" meaning it actually exists as opposed to fictional or imaginary.
No comments:
Post a Comment