Day 34

I woke up this morning a little early and was surprised to find out the wifi could reach to our campsite! I wrote for a little while and started the long process of going through emails since we've been gone. I must check my email ten times a day when I'm at home, but on the road it just doesn't matter. Everyone who is important to me knows I'm not reachable so the rest just can wait!

We decided to make a quick breakfast of bagels and fruit and get on the road. We had a very long drive today with a grocery stop and a border crossing. Dave has become quite adept at packing up by now so I can just handle things as I have time in between wrangling kids and cooking breakfast. The kids definitely appreciate having the extra help instead of being the extra help!

We stopped for gas right around the corder as in these parts of Canada and Montana you might not see a town for 100 miles or more. The older Canadian versions of Jay & Silent Bob were standing outside smoking and noticed we are from Florida so they chatted with us for awhile about the hurricane. A guy on a motorcycle pulled up and starting chatting with us about where we'd been and where we're headed. It must be Dave because noone ever talks to me on the road. Or maybe they think I'm some crazy lady from Florida carting my three kids around the country!

Our next stop just down the road was none other than the World's Largest Teepee. I had a little help from Dave in planning this trip so this was one of his additions. We hadn't made it to many of his stops simply because our day was already long or they were just too weird. This stop was just down the road and I was pleasantly surprised by the sheer amount of information there was here!

Once we got on the road, Dave finally got a taste of my Montana and Oklahoma drives this leg of the trip with us not seeing any city for most of the three hours he drove. I don't think we saw more than 6 cars in the 2 hours to the border. He also did much better crossing the border back into the U.S. as our border guard was not having any funny business. I think Dave was a little concerned he was going to confiscate the beer he'd bought but the guard let us go on.  And we finally found a real welcome sign for Montana!!

After about another hour we found a Walmart for a stock up. It was the smallest Walmart I'd even been in and by the time we got to the check out lanes I was ready to be back in the woods. Perhaps I'm not quite ready to get back to civilization yet.

We pulled into our next stop - a real RV park - and after a little confusion were setting up as was our normal routine. Ryan and Brayden had watched The Lord of the Rings movie in the car so all the kids ducked into the tent to play the Lego version. After I threw a couple loads on laundry in the washing machines, we adults prepped dinner and snacked a little as we watched some football. Hooray for DirectTV in the RV!!

We had a delicious dinner of salad with grilled shrimp while we watched and looked for hurricane updates. We were becoming spoiled with wifi at the last two places! The building with laundry also had a few bathrooms - real home kind of bathrooms eek! - so I took a shower once all the laundry was finished and everyone was in bed. I took a little while to edit pictures but got to bed by 11 as Grammie and I had already decided to get out of town by 8 with another long drive ahead of us.

Day 30

With all of us being up so late I late the kids sleep as late as they wanted.  Other than going across the border today we really didn't have any plans.  After I sorted all the laundry and wrote for a little while, I started pancakes and that roused everyone from their sleep around 8.  We are stuggling a little bit having three kids back together again as someone's routinely left out, a family kid triangle of sorts.

Once we got all packed up we headed to the visitors center for a look at the exhibits.  We'd stopped by the night before with Grammie but they were closed pretty early.  We learned a lot from the displays about how dunes are created and the wildlife that is in the area.  The area was once completely made up of sand dunes much like our beaches at home.  Now it's mostly forest within 20 feet of the beach.

They have tons of bird feeders all around the visitors center so there was lots of wildlife
there this morning.  Besides all the birds and hummingbirds we saw a wild turkey and I finally got a picture of the black squirrel we've seen so much over the last month.

As we were leaving the town I recognized some landmarks I was supposed to be remembering for some reason but in my old age I couldn't remember why.  About 100 feet after I was supposed to turn I realized we were supposed to stop at a huge sand dune for the kids to climb and rundown.  After a quick u-turn which completely confuses the kids, we were there and they were scaling this sand mountain. Here are all the kids struggling to make it to the top.  I think Brayden actually laid down at one point.

Here they come down!

After their 5th time down, they convinced me to go up but I had to bring the camera to get the view down.  It was quite a workout to get all the way up there!  Here is the view down - that's Ryan way down there at the bottom!

I ran down just before the other two and completely felt like a kid again scrambling down that hill. I was trying so hard to stay on my feet since I was still holding the camera.  I just couldn't stop laughing it was so fun!  I even got a big high five from Ryan at the end.  I think Brayden just enjoyed falling a bunch of times on the way down.

We only had about 30 minutes to the border but it had been about 2 hours since breakfast and I had some Canadian money to spend, so we stopped at the Tim Horton's and I let the kids get whatever they wanted.  All three picked a chocolate-covered, creme-filled, oreo-covered, chocolate donut.  I almost went into sugar shock just looking at the thing.  The kids dropped the rest of our Canadian money into the donation box for an organization for kids and we were back in the car.  I turned the music up in hopes they would come down from their sugar high long before it was over.

For the past 10 days in Canada and many in Illinois we'd driven by so many farms with wind turbines.  I finally found a barn and field I liked to take a picture of one.  While listening to Canada's public radio I'd heard about some controversy over a town not wanting to have them, but I'm not sure why.  I don't think I would mind them in my backyard and would definitely choose them dotting the landscape over an ugly power plant.  There must be some other reason against them I'm not aware of?

Not too much later we were on this gigantic bridge into the states.  My phone starting dinging and binging catching up to being out of the country for so long and within a few minutes Grandpa was calling the kids.  They have missed him so much and they all really enjoyed talking to another adult other than me and Grammie.  The line wasn't too bad to get back into the states.  Here is the view from the top of the bridge.

I always feel like I sound like such a goofball when I'm talking to the border agents.  Much of my time when I'm waiting in line is talking to the kids or planning our route.  I really need to think about what I'm going to say before get up there.  He just laughed at me, searched my cooler, and let us go.  I guess we don't look too harmless.  We sent texts to Grammie and Dave to let them know we were officially allowed back in and went on our way.

About another hour into our drive we stopped to stretch and enjoy the view of the lake.  The kids welcomed the time to walk around especially once they saw the sign to the stairs down to the lake.  They were down there before I could even grab my camera out of the car! They found a little river on the beach and decided to try to make a dam like the beavers we'd seen. After moving several sticks and rocks, they were successful for about 5 minutes until the sand eroded away.

With the promise of ice cream in the town next to our park, we were off again with big discussions about the different flavors they would have.  After a little bit of a search, we found a small store with giant scoops!  The girls decided on Michigan pot hole which was very similar to all the ingredients in their doughnut earlier that morning.  Brayden decided against anything local and ordered key lime pie.  Who needs dinner when you've got these scoops at 5pm?

 

We were officially in the thumb of Michigan now at Port Crescent State Park.  After we set up we started the 4th game in our series of campball.  Laney and I were determined to beat them for sure tonight.  They took an early lead with an error by the old pitcher and were up 2-0. After a few walks and a hit by that old pitcher, we were up 4-3.  In the bottom of the 3rd however, Brayden hit a pop fly to the fence and scored their winning run.  I guess our series needs to be lengthened if we're ever going to win it!

After the kids gobbled up grilled cheese, soup, and pears we headed to the playground.  They found some friends to play "Sandman" with so Laney could learn too.  There was a girl about Brayden's age playing that was so good with the girls helping them get away from Brayden so they had a lot of fun with her.

Before too long the sun was getting low so we headed back to our site for the kids to take
showers and check out the sunset. Conveniently, there was a paddle boarder crusing by right about that time.

Ryan stacked up our family of rocks - the 5 of us and Grammie - and we sat and watched the sun dip down into the horizon.  After reading for a little while, we were all out to the gentle sounds of the waves.