Day 11

We all slept in today so once I got back from my shower, the kids were already peeking out so I started our fire and oatmeal.  Oatmeal is not Brayden's favorite, but if I load it with enough extras like this morning's apples, cinnamon, raisins, granola, and brown sugar, he'll eat it.  By the time he finished though, all we had left to pack was his chair, the dishes, and the tent - the girls and I had finished everything else.  I'm not sure it's registered yet that he could stall every pack up day and get out of all the work!

We stopped back by the nature center this morning to be able to see all the exhibits inside and since it was drizzling, so did everyone else!  It was packed but the exhibits were all very interesting and informative.  There were animals in tanks, animal skins, learning activites, animal bones and feathers, a whole exhibit on the formation of the Dells and the Wisconsin River, and a ton of historical photographs of the area.

Ryan pulled me into a room to check out the mystery boxes.  She loves these things, but only after someone does them first so she can be assured her hand will still be intact afterward.  All the kids were grossed out when they realized what they were touching was called "poop on a stick".  It wasn't actually poop.  Just the name for a fungus.

Our path out of the park was through the other campground and I was so glad we camped in the Northern Lights section of the park.  This campground reminded me so much of home with the sparse trees and flat ground.  I'd much rather be tucked in the woods - here was out site - absolutely beautiful!!

Today was to be one of our longer drives so I'd prepared a bunch of snacks, movies and activites to hand back.  The kids were actually completely quiet for the first 2 hours reading magazines I'd brought for each of them.  Brayden's of course was Kids Sports Illustrated so he rattled off random facts for the first hour.  Ryan's was an animal magazine which she traded with Brayden after she'd pulled out the poster and read everything.  Laney's was a pre-teen girl magazine that neither of the others wanted to get near so she had it all to herself.

We were going to be meeting up with a cousin of mine today I'd met once when I was 4 or 5.  I'd been to Woodhull, where the reunion was a few days ago, to visit all that family and see snow.  She was a little older than me but I can still hear my Great Aunt Joyce say her name.  Just before we stopped we just had to turn around to get a picture here since I'd missed the geographic marker 3 years ago in Indiana I believe.  This isn't the actual official spot but close enough.  And of course I missed the real one anyway just up the road.

 Fortunately for us, she was camping on our route to our next stop so we met up in a town nearby for ice cream.  It was great to learn a little more about my family as this other side has also been traced back to royalty, this time in Wales wow!

As we were chatting she mentioned we might want to go down the street and see the last log stacker in the world left over from lumberjack logging days.  We enjoyed the walk down there and learned quite a bit at the visitors center.  The kids enjoyed running an obstacle course across some tires even more and I appreciated the stretch with 3 more hours to go.

 

















We settled in with a movie for the kids and music for me and were off.  The gps said we would be at the ferry in just under 3 hours.  I quickly checked ferry schedule as I remembered they were every half hour during the day and became more spread out through the night.  According to the schedule we would get there with 1 minute to spare.  Now you all know I'm a pretty competitive person.  I have been known to throw games for fun for my kids to win, but also to practically run them over for a touchdown.

So I now have about 3 hours to make up some time to ensure our spot on the ferry as the next one would leave 90 minutes later.  Little did I know I'd be driving curvy Wisconsin back roads.  And do people in Wisconsin always drive the speed limit?  It seems every time I passed someone I'd be behind someone else within a few minutes that was going 5 miles under the speed limit.  Didn't they know I was racing against the clock here?

The drive was beautiful the entire way and the kids enjoyed more new books and listening to another cd of The Grimm Legacy.  We made it to the ferry with 6 minutes to spare after a slow construction zone and being stuck behind a really long camper for awhile.  The kids were shocked how cold it was after being closed up in a car all day!  It was a quick but beautiful ferry ride and the kids enjoyed petting all the dogs along for the ride.

The town of LaPointe was adorable and we couldn't wait to get back the next day.  We made it to our park, found our spot, and quickly set up.  Our site had a nice little elevated spot in the grass that was just perfectly about the size of our tent.  As I was putting on the rainfly I noticed about 41 slugs had already decided to make our tent walls there home for awhile so we unstaked and moved the tent back down to the gravel.  I'm not a slug-hater, I just don't want to have to deal with popping them all off in 2 days when we take the tent down.  If there is 41 now after about 10 minutes, no telling how many there would be by the time we leave?

We were all getting cold and hungry so we walked down to the camphost and picked up a pile of firewood.  Tonight would be macaroni and cheese in the fire!  It's definitely not the quickest method, but it sure was delicious.  The kids played a cooking game over the fire while I cleaned up and after we read a couple chapters we went to bed.  Tonight I we would have the tent windows zipped up as I already had socks on it was so chilly!

Day 10

There had been a definite drop in temperature once we'd crossed the border into Wisconsin.  We made sure to buy plenty of firewood as my favorite fires are with us huddled around over breakfast to cut the morning chill.  I got up early to get some writing done, make a missed reservation at our next stop, and check out the things we wanted to do for the day.  Just as I'd gotten things out of the car for breakfast and had lit the fire, Brayden came out of the tent to enjoy it with me.  That boy has some kind of strange sense to know when there is a campfire anywhere near him.

After a delicious southern breakfast of cheese grits and toast, we headed out for the day in the Wisconsin Dells.  The kids were wow-ed by all the gigantic resorts with water and theme parks that went on for blocks.  Ryan was so amazed she immediately put it at the top of her list for yer 10-year-old solo plane trip.  That girl is so cold-natured we would have to go in the middle of July for her to be able to stand the water!

Our first stop was the Original Duck tour of the Dells.  I'd read reviews of a couple and this one was supposed to be the best so I grabbed some slushies for the kids and we hopped on. We learned a little of the history of the Dells, had a fun ride through the woods, saw some beautiful rock formations but mostly chuckled at some silly jokes and puns.  My absolute favorite part was the fact that the kids did not get the little duck call necklaces like I've seen on many of the other duck tours in other cities.  I'm not sure I could stand that for another 35 days.

Here is Laney right before a big hill!

Hawk's Beak  Pulpit Rock

Next up was finding some cheese.  Our family has a thing for cheese so this is the perfect place for us to try some.  I am a pretty indecisive person and this place was overwhelming!  Our favorite cheese were there as well as many more we'd never heard of.  Time to have a taste!  We walked out with 5 or 6 kinds, one that would wait in the cooler for Dave to join us, to hopefully last us the rest of our trip.

  

Oh I how I wanted to grab this 10lb wheel of gouda but I don't think it would even fit in my cooler!



The whines were setting in so we went in search of food.  I'd made note of a pizza & brewery in the area and Brayden happened to find a coupon for it, so we headed there.  I've definitely had better pizza but the beer was delicious.  They also made their own soda so the kids each ordered a different flavor so they could end up tasting them all.  Root beer was a definite favorite!

With a few hours to spare before we needed to be back in town, we headed back to the campground to check out the nature center.  The program was wonderful - so wonderful we didn't even get a chance to go inside the center!  The activities taught the kids about the water cycle, animal prints, and animal babies.  We'd studied all of these before either in school, scouts, or homeschool co-op but each activity had a different spin on it that taught each of them something new.  Some of the bug babies were really strange looking!

After time for the kids to relax and play in the tent and me to get organized to leave in the morning, we headed out to our plan for the night - a lumberjack show!  The kids decided on this show instead of the popular ski show since we could see something like that closer to home.  They had a blast!  We learned a little about the life of a lumberjack and they cheered on our team as the competed to win the most events.  Bray and I had seen similar competitions before on ESPN so we knew what to expect, but the girls were amazed!  There was even one guy from Hayward, WI Grandpa Scott!

After each competition the winning team would run out in the crowd and hand someone in the audience a "cookie" - a cut of wood from the event.  Laney got the first one from our side and she loved having it signed by the guys.

After a quick picture with Paul Bunyan's "Babe", we headed home and collapsed after our long day.  We went to sleep to the sounds of the crickets with our windows wide open enjoying the opportunity to snuggle down in our sleeping bags.

Day 9

Our plan this morning was to pack up as usual, take care of some laundry, meet up with my friend Katie from high school, then head on to our next stop.  One of the things I've learned from summer trips is the ability to be flexible and change the plan on the fly.  Today was another one of those days as we had a heavy rain shower at 5am when I usually get up, write about the day before, get everything ready for the day of travel and begin packing up.  I wasn't going to pack up a tent that was soaking wet so I decided to scratch laundry off our list and let the kids sleep in longer.  I sat in the tent and wrote about the previous two days and edited pictures.  After I was finished I slipped out of the tent to start packing and peeked back into check on the kids, only to find two of them had taken over my spot!

Finally by 8am, all the kids were rolling around mostly ready to start the day.  On our trek to the nicer bathroom sans spiders, we discussed the options for the day and the kids chose packing up and eating breakfast in the car to be able to get on the road.  We had a busy drive ahead of us so I made sure to pack a bunch of snacks and get the current audio book, The Grimm Legacy, ready to play.  So far this book has been a big favorite as the kids draw or stare out the window hanging on to the reader's every word.  They think Dave should listen to it while we're gone!

Once we were packed up we said goodbye to the beautiful, towering trees of Johnson Sauk Trail State Park and headed toward Chicago.  We made one quick stop on the way out of the park at the round barn on the property.  When the kids heard "barn" they thought animals too, but of course this is a historic site of an old farm.  The barn was beautiful and much bigger up close than the pictures I'd seen.

In all our travels we'd skirted about many big cities and gone right down the middle of others.  I always forget about the toll roads though!  Thank goodness I had quarters for laundry or Dave was going to be getting some bills at home!  Our drive was pretty slow as there is some serious construction happening on the interstate, but we eventually made it to lunch with Katie at Burnt Toast in Algonquin.  Once I told the kids where we were meeting, we all talked and laughed about the kinds of food a place called Burnt Toast would serve.  Of course the food was much, much better than our version!  Even though I'd just seen Katie down in Florida for a lunch event, it was nice to be able to sit and talk and definitely to meet each other's kids!  She was wonderful in giving us some ideas on things to do while we were in the area too.  The time flew by way to fast and before we knew it, it was time to get on the road to make it to our next stop.  Ryan snapped a picture of us before we got back on the road!



I set the GPS to avoid toll roads and it ended up being only an extra 15 minutes and I'm sure the drive would be quite a few more back roads as well - definitely more entertaining for the driver!  We called Dave as we do on many drive days and he just happened to be on the phone with Brayden as we crossed the border!

We made it to Devil's Lake with plenty of sunshine and the kids spotted the lake as we drove up.  I chuckled as I knew there was no way they would actually swim in the frigid waters, but agreed to take them down after we'd set up.  The campground is nestled into a ridge overlooking the road to the lake and is surrounded by gorgeous trees.  We bought a bundle of firewood at check in as I knew we'd be able to enjoy a fire with the cooler weather.  After set up, the kids hopped into their bathing suits and we headed down to the lake for a "swim".  They noticed other kids way out swimming around so they thought it couldn't be that bad.  Until they stepped in.

They all immediately folded their arms and stood there shifting their feet back and forth.  They refused to get out though and eventually ended up finding some rocks and splashing a little bit.  Once the sun hid behind the rocks, it was definitely time to get back and eat.  Brayden requested one of his boy scout favorites - pizzadillas - only wish I'd had some fresh veggies to put in there too! We enjoyed our first fire of the trip and headed off to bed quite a bit later than normal.