Thursday with the Spud

This morning, since we're looking at triple-digit heat (I blame Al Gore), I rolled the Spud out of bed at dawn and after a quick, nutritious breakfast of ceral and left-over barbecued ribs from last night--and milk--we went out to the shooting range. I gave him choice of the gun room contents and he chose the Armalite AR-7 .22 survival rifle. Before we got there, I quizzed him on the four rules of gun safety and he came up with two right off the bat, and the other two with a little coaching. Not too bad considering that he hasn't been shooting or anywhere near a firearm since Aaron and I took him out last year.His gun handling was safe and his shooting not too bad when he remembered to slow down and aim. TV and movie shooting is such a bad influence on youth today...
In sum though, he followed directions and was very safety conscious and I was proud of him.

So after that, to beat the heat, we drove down to Luray, Virginia to check out the Luray Caverns. Spud had never been in a real cave before so he was pretty excited about it. Here he is, passing through one of the narrow spots. It was quite a nice place with plenty of spectacular formations and a bleddedly cool 54 degrees. Sorry, but my camera doesn't work well in spots like this so it's all you get unless you look at their website linked above.

Then we came back home, stopping off for barbecued ribs at a BBQ stand we spotted along the way. After that fine lunch, it was time to hang out with Murphy and do a bit of reading in the air conditioning.But what's he reading?
Thanks for the suggestion, Aunt Brigid!

We'll be taking Murphy swimming in a bit, then heading back here to find something good to toss on the grill for dinner.