Shuttle Bus Anyone?

Ah, the testosterone experience of a lifetime-the browsing of the Lacey, WA Cabela's. I've grown up with the catalogs coming to our house. When I was on my way to college at UNL, I stopped in at Cabela's in Kearney, NE. Very cool store, I thought. That was also fourteen years ago when Cabela's in Kearney was the only store outside of Sidney, NE. I thought it was cool then.

Nothing could have prepared me for what I experienced yesterday. We made the trip to Olympia to visit Bigboy's grandfather, and decided to see the new store on our way back. This was definitely a different experience. Finding it wasn't difficult once we found the never ending line of SUVs and trucks in the oncoming traffic. All you had to do was follow their path. Once there, stretching beyond visible bounds, was the vast sea of parking. Most of course which was occupied by trucks and SUVs. Parking is available for RVs in a separate section, with water and power hook-ups readily available. We were fortunate enough to find an open space for our sub-compact car somewhere in this ocean. Is there a shuttle bus anywhere? I can't see the front door of this place. Where am I supposed to enter the store?

Now that we finally found the front door, finding our way around turned out to be an amazing feat. This place is cool, no,awesome, more like amazing. If you look beyond the mass of people everywhere, you see what they call Conservation Mountain. On this indoor mountain, there are various wildlife, preserved with information blurbs. In the middle of the mountain, is an aquarium. I could have spent hours just reading about everything in and around the mountain.

Eventually, we were able to wander around enough to find furniture, gifts, shoes, clothing (most of the lower floor is dedicated to clothing) and fishing gear. We never made it to the boats and boating supplies. Upstairs, we found everything hunting related. WOW. We never made it over to camping gear. Amazingly, we only spent an hour and a half in the entire store.

Beadgirl decided it would be a good idea to begin whining after the first half hour. As with all kids, this whining went on about being bored, feet hurting, brothers pestering, and general excuses for whining. We have certain standards in our house regarding attitudes, and things just got to an inappropriate level.

Still no shuttle bus for the trip back to the car, we finally found ourselves. That parking lot was still full when we left. There was still traffic a massive heard of SUVs and trucks coming into the parking lot. I wonder if they found a place to park.