Day 2 - Mahoney State Park

 Eugene T Mahoney State Park is pretty full featured as state parks are concerned.  They have a lodge, cabins, RV camping, and tent camping (although tent camping appears to be the minority).  Activities include mini golf, aquatics center, horse and pony riding, theater, marina, hiking, biking, etc.  Look them up on the web for a complete listing if you are curious.

Coffee Rig and happy camper

We got lucky when reserving a site and ended up picking a nice secluded spot with enough pseudo-level land to pitch the tent and enough trees and field that we weren't crowded.  We were also treated to a family of deer passing about 40 yards away through the prairie behind our site.

The kids made friends with some neighbor camping kids and enjoyed playing hide-n-seek in the woods.  The neighbors also had 3 kids plus a dog and two tents and they fit everything in their Chevy Blazer.  I was impressed and motivated to do better fitting all of our stuff into the SS Odyssey.
The coffee rig worked ok.  It isn't the most elegant or compact but it made coffee and hot chocolate so much happiness ensued.
Katrina got up early to go get tickets for the horse ride.  The building didn't open until 8:00 and when she arrived at 8:02 there were already ten names on the list so we didn't get the early morning ride we hoped for but rather the 2:30pm ride.   So in the morning we went hiking along the Platt river and visited the 90ft observation tower.  Found a convenient tree branch, high above the ground :), for a family picture.

The horseback riding was a new experience for the kids and they all very much enjoyed it.  This was the right introduction to horseback riding experience for them.  We thank our horses: Ranger, Dandy, Onyx, Trooper and Maverick for putting up with us.

Katrina needed some time to work so I took the kids to the mini-golf course even though the sky was looking a little like rain.  We played 18+ holes with half of them in the rain and pretty much the whole course to ourselves.  We played without a maximum stroke limit which made the course go on for a couple hours.  'A' ended up winning.

We hit the road tomorrow morning (hopefully early) for Wyoming.  My brother is going to try and setup a tent someplace in Vedauwoo to hold a spot for us since WY doesn't do camp reservations.