Day 1 was the travel day. Day 2, Saturday was when the bike was to be checked in and we would drive the bike and run courses. We weren’t due to meet up with Chris and Meryl until mid-morning.
I decided to go on a walk since I’ve been doing it regularly at home and I sure needed to get some exercise after that 13-hour drive the day before. I took this photo for Dan because I thought he’d get a kick out of those cars.
The staging for the Ironman gets complicated. After the athletes get out of the water on race day they move to where the bikes are staged. The clock is already ticking so they want transition time to be as quick as possible. The bike needs to be ready to go and some people leave their gear bags there the day before or may plan to bring them back on race-day morning. Transition from swim-to-run requires a towel, whatever clothes you are going to put on over swimwear (after of course removing the wetsuit at the end of the swim–there are usually volunteers to help pull it off), and cycling shoes and helmet. The bike-to-run transition is usually just switching shoes and leaving the helmet behind with the bike.
After Chris checked in he was given all the numbered stickers for his helmet and the bike. He takes great care to make sure that sticker is on perfectly straight and even.
This is NOT the gear he will wear on race day, but after putting wheels back on the bike he needed to take it for a short test ride.
There are racks set up for all the bikes. Gear bags are left with the bikes or brought the next morning. We drove the course, checking out the long uphills on the bike course. After we had seen the course and spent some time exploring the lake shore roads we went back to the hotel for awhile. Dan was out of reading material and saw that there was a book store on the same street as the hotel. This place was called EntertainmentMart and it calls itself an entertainment superstore. It was a pretty amazing store but we didn’t explore it all–just the books, used and new. Here’s an abrupt change of photos.
There was a table set up just inside and an author was there with her first book, a fantasy adventure. I talked to her and her husband for awhile and they said asked if I wanted to put on the gloves and helmet that were for their display. I chose the gloves. And I bought the book.
The store also had music and a section of vinyl records. This was an interesting use for some of the none-collectable LPs.
Back to the main event.
On Sunday we set the alarm for 4-something so we could meet up with Chris and Meryl by 4:30 and drive to the event. You never know what traffic will be like when almost 2000 people try to get to the same spot at the same time.
Walking to the start at about 5 a.m.
To be continued.
Matt brought his drone.
The sheep have been in the barn and corral area for the last month because the pasture is soggy and I’m waiting for the grass to get some growth, but I set up the fence to let them out onto part of it for the day.
The drone gives us a great view of the property. There is a video taken with the drone on 
We opened gifts. I bought Dan a series of used books that are by author Stan Lynde. Our last name is unusual and we had found a book by this author on our most recent road trip. Dan got about half way into it and found that pages 140-180 were repeated and 180 to 120 were missing. When I looked into replacing the book I found that the author was dead, his publishing company no longer existed, and that there were about 7 or 8 books in the series. So I hunted them all down and wrapped up the Stan Lynde books for Dan Lynde.
Dan made DIL, Meryl, a marker for her parking spot to reflect her new job as an Orange Theory coach. 
My daughter sent us all aprons embellished by the grandkids. 
Time for getting dinner in the oven. Chris, mac and cheese lover that he is, has become a cream sauce expert.
While dinner was cooking we went out for another drone session…
…and a family photo. 
Dinner on the table.
We may have started a new tradition with a game from Santa. It’s a card game based on the old computer game, The Oregon Trail, that my kids loved to play years ago. 
You can play with up to six players so we created teams so that all 11 of us could play. We may study the rules between now and the next time we play. Our wagon team eventually all died–there may be better strategy than we used. 
After pies (pumpkin and apple) we moved onto a game my niece has on her phone. 
Trying to get my brother to guess Valley Girl.
A lively time was had by all.
And to all a good night.
Kasen was about 21 months.
Kirby is was four and a little bit.
I think that I would have loved to have a trampoline when I was a kid.
We visited the pumpkin patch to choose pumpkins and try to get a family portrait.
First, a chicken picture.
I don’t think it was possible to get everyone looking in the same direction at the same time. But a beautiful family nevertheless.
On the fifth day of our visit we took a field trip to Cabella’s. There is plenty of entertainment even if you don’t go for the shopping. We started with the aquarium.
There are rooms full of animals.
There are spectacular horns on these and other sheep. By the time we finished eating and shopping it was getting dark and we headed to Wimberly for the Trail of Lights.
Dozens of local businesses and families light and decorate the gardens of the 12-acre EmilyAnn Theater & Garden. This is an annual event and a major fundraiser for the theater.
Containing him worked a little better.
We had the truck loaded and I 
About 10 am. Dan and Matt and I got in the truck and headed for Big Bend National Park, about seven hours away.
Here the Chisos Mountains rise out of the desert. The park entrance is at an elevation of 2848′ and the peaks rise to over 7800′. Our camp the first night was at 5400′ which meant that there was still snow from the storm which had come through.
We got there towards dusk and found a campsite just as it was getting dark.
