Day 6

I think we've all gotten used to the night sounds of camping by now.  There are the cars occasionally whizzing by, the gentle wind in the high trees which sounds like rain without the beating on the tent roof, the footsteps of other campers through the gravel, and the birds rustling in the leaves around us. Each night it seems we all sleep a little more soundly than the night before.  Until I hear a gunshot next to me.  Or what I thought was one.  It was around 2am when I had just flipped to give one hip and shoulder a break and had just settled down when I heard a sharp bang right next to my head.  Within a second I felt a flat piece of rubber land on my hand.  Any guesses? Brayden's punching balloon had just randomly popped and now my heart was beating 400 beats per minute.  Never a dull moment even when we're sleeping!

As I repack the car today, I keep wondering just how we are going to fit Dave in there in a few weeks.  Without me sitting criss crossed in the passenger seat holding his luggage in my lap I'm not sure it's going to be possible. I guess I'll need to start making the adjustments now!

We were off pretty early this morning once the kids finally woke up and we headed straight to Trader Joe's for our last visit until after we leave Canada in a couple weeks.  We can devour a tub of yogurt in one sitting so we definitely need to stock up on more.  And if you ever go to Trader Joe's, absolutely DO NOT buy the cookie butter.  There was a very nice man, let's call him the cookie butter pusher, that spotted us from the other end of the store to offer us a sample of cookie butter.  The kids love any kind of free sample of course, so we agreed and the rest is history.  My kids are addicted and I'm going to have to ration what I did buy.  Or just convince them I lost it and eat it by the spoonful after they are asleep.

Next stop was the Louisville Slugger Museum.  I'd kept this stop a secret as I knew Brayden would love the surprise and he definitely did!  That and when he gets really excited about something he can't stop talking so I wasn't ready for that quite yet.  And fortunately for Laney who had begged to go to Lincoln's birthplace, we noticed it was on our way so we made a quick stop to check it out.  Laney has a new fascination with Lincoln, so just had to!  They were all excited to find out there was another junior ranger opportunity there so we ended up hanging around for a couple hours.  There was an interesting movie, nice exhibits, a kids program about a frontier child's life, and a memorial with the actual log cabin housed inside.

They we actually stopped a the Lousiville Slugger Museum & Factory.  There was a museum room where Brayden immediately starting bouncing and drooling over all the Derek Jeter memorabilia but first we headed to the factory tour.  They didn't allow photos so you'll just have to visit yourself to see!  Although the tour only lasted about 20 minutes, we all learned a lot about the company history as well as the bat-making process.

Next up, the kids were able to stand where a batter would for a 90mph pitch.  Brayden decided right then there was no way he was going to play professional baseball.  We watched several interesting movies and walked around the museum.  This is Brayden actually petting a Derek Jeter bat.

And this is him holding one.  I thought he was going to pass out.   That or run down the street with it.

Then Brayden went to the cheapest batting cages I've seen in a long time and hit 10 balls for $1!

Next up was the Topps trading cards museum.  Brayden was hopping around here like it was a candy store!  It was neat to see all the old Star Wars, Garbage Pail Kids, Lost In Space, and all the sports cards as well.  There was even a section of error cards that were neat too.  The kids enjoyed making there own...they need to grow a little bit I think!

After a quick purchase at the store, we hopped in the car to head to our next site.  There was a science museum across the street from the bat museum but with our unexpected stop we just couldn't fit it in as we still had a 3 hour drive ahead of us.  I need to get a time zone map as I guess I never notice the small signs on the highway when we pass.  So not only were we running late, we had lost an hour!  I called the state park to make sure they didn't lock the gate at before sunset, but could never get an answer. So I grabbed the kids milkshakes for dinner and popped in Despicable Me 2 (thank you Jeffersons!!) and headed on our way.

With about 30 minutes to the campground we left the highway were making our way through county roads.  We were definitely in the middle of Illinois farm country now and these roads eerily reminded me of the back country, pot hole-ridden roads of Kansas.  They just kept getting more and more narrow with each turn I made.  With about 5 turns left, I ended up on a gravel road that had the kids bouncing in their chairs!  On the third turn, it looked like I was heading down someone's driveway with dirt tire tracks but otherwise grass all around.

Queue the lighting.  Great.  It was 8:30pm and we still had to set up and our friend lightning shows up. The last turn gets me back onto a paved road and we race to the campsite (at the posted 25mph) and I enlist the help of all my troops to get everything out of the car and everything in the tent we'd need for the night.  We had everything set up and in the tent with time to spare so we ran to the bathrooms.  Then it hit.  It poured those giant raindrops and I could tell more storm was on the way so we raced back to the tent and I grabbed towels and changes of clothes as we were all completely soaked.

There was no way anyone was going to sleep with all that excitement and it was entirely too loud to read so we just laid there and talked about rain and lightning and all kinds of things in between.  Ryan was out within 30 seconds but the other 2 were up with me for about another hour fighting and laughing and trying to wake Ryan up.  What a bunch of turds.

We all ended up asleep by 11 in hopes at least the lightning and thunder would stop.

Quote of the day: "I could live there." says Laney when peeking into Lincoln's tiny log cabin. That's our Little House on the Prairie, sewing-obsessed, dress-loving girl.  I believe her for sure!

Day 27

Day 27

The neighbors were up at 4am to leave, so after flipping and flopping, I decided to get up as well.  After getting things ready for the day, I started cooking a new breakfast creation we learned about on the rafting trip - mexicones - except it was going to be stuffed with breakfast food.  They are basically rolled tortillas in the shape of an ice cream cone stuffed with whatever.  After eating his first one, Brayden began coming up with different meals we could have with them.  He decided his favorite would be a "cone" stuffed with bananas, peanut butter, chocolate chips, and ice cream.  Sounds good to me!

We had on the schedule today two museums - Indiana State Police Museum for our budding police officer and Inidianapolis Children's Museum.  Before leaving I got a text from Dave who was already in Ohio asking us to drive through a day early to see him.  Of course I wanted to go right then, but I could disappoint Ryan who had been looking forward to this day for the entire trip.

The police museum was pretty neat for the kids.  There was a bunch of memorabilia, old photos and apparatus, and uniforms as well as old police cars.  One car they had specifically set up for kids was actually two car fronts welded together back to back.  The kids could get in and operate the lights and sirens on each side as well as talk on the radio to the other car front.  The kids got to wear police hats as well as official state trooper badge stickers.  I think they might still have them on two days later!

While we were piling in the car, I presented our options for the rest of the day to the kids.  Since we still had a museum on the to do list, they were reluctant to skip it knowing there was a hot wheels exhibit there.  After much negotiation between themselves, they decided to go to the museum and see if it looked fun enough to stay for awhile then we would head to reunite with Dave.  Upon entering the museum we saw the enormous figure of Bumble Bee Transformer and they were hooked.

This museum's claim to fame is they are the largest children's museum in the country.  It is 5 spacious floors of exhibits for all ages of children.  My kids' favorite parts were Hot Wheels of course:

the Egypt Exhibit:

the dinosaur exhibit:

Laney loved seeing the dollhouses:

Having been to Magic House and their oodles of activities, I was a bit disappointed in the amount at this museum.  I suppose I had some pretty high expectations with all the hype and recommendations from local people to go there.  It was absolutely still fun for the kids I just suppose I expected it to be a Magic House on steroids!

As we got back in the car, the excitement started to build for seeing Dave.  After a quick stop for a drive-thru dinner and a redbox movie, we hopped on the road for the 4-hour drive to Dave.  If the kids were excited when they decided to drive on, they were incredibly excited once they saw this:

Of course, we still had about 3 hours to go!  The drive was a quick interstate one, so it went by pretty quick and our family was back together finally in Ohio.  Unfortunately, I don't have any photos because we didn't get there until 9pm.  The kids screamed "Daddy!!!" through the windows, alerting the neighbors to our presence.  The kids ended up staying up with two older kids until 1am while Dave and I relaxed with adults and a few beers.  It was so very nice to be back together as a family!

Day 26

The kids are getting more and more accustomed to sleeping in the tent each night with all the noises and shuffling.  So much so that they are sleeping in every morning!  I still get up at the crack of dawn to get stuff ready to go, and they doze until I start taking the tent down!  Here's proof we were in Illinois:

We were off this morning to a new state and to a place Brayden has been looking forward to since we began planning the trip - Lincoln's home.  He studied the presidents in second grade this year, so it was interesting for him to put a physical place with a name and picture.

The National Park Service owns the property and they have done a fantastic job keeping it up so the public can get a chance to see a part of history.  We rolled in around 10:45 and were able to get included in the next tour at 11:30, so we were able to look around the museum and watch a short movie about Lincoln's life.  The tour seemed to be limited to only about 10 people, most likely because of the lack of space in the walkable parts of the home, but I enjoyed the ability of the tour guide to reall interact with all of us.

Next up, a new state!!

Just before we arrived at our campground we entered the nearby town, Rockville.  I smiled because I just happened to be listening to R.E.M. which has a song about a town called Rockville and guess what song just happened to come on next.  We were scouting out pizza places along the way for a possible dinner until the chorus of the song, "Don't go back to Rockville...", so I took that as a small sign to cook on our campstove.  The campground was nice, unfortunately we arrived too late to be able to see much of the actual park at Turkey Run State Park.

There was a nice playground however, so after dinner we headed over there.  There were tons of kids at this park, so my kids really enjoyed playing with someone other than me for a change.  Laney got so attached to one girl, that she wanted to invite her to spend the night.  After I declined, she said maybe she could see her for just 3 minutes in the morning before we left.  I think she really enjoyed the game of vampire cats they were playing.

We retired pretty early for a chapter of Masterpiece, a book about a beetle that befriends a boy in the house they are both sharing.