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 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.

Day 8

So although we'd hoped for a quiet night it was anything but quiet.  I was up beginning about 3am checking on the condition of the tent as the rain was steady, heavy and loud.  With the kids staking down the tent for me, there is definite room for improvement in keeping the water out. Luckily, we still had towels in the tent from the drenching the night before so I was able to strategically place them in our puddle areas.  We were definitely dry otherwise so all was good.  I debated beginning to pack up but decided instead to nap until the rain seemed to calm.

My sister-in-law recommended a weather app with to-the-minute predictions for rain and so far it seemed to be accurate within about 20 minutes. Once I was able to check the radar it looked as though it could have been exponentially worse with the heavy thunderstorms going directly north and south of us all night.  So maybe we need to start a new bedtime ritual of crossing everything! ?

Packing up a campsite takes time even once you get a pattern down.  There are things we do the same every time and there are usually things I tweak every time to make it all better.  I can tell you from experience though that packing up while it's pouring rain is NOT FUN.  And it's also quite messy.  I was fine with messy as we did have showers so I was resolved to find a window with the least amount of rain and go for it.  It looked as though 5-6am would work for us so I got started.  One by one, the kids woke up and got started on their parts of packing up as well.  Last, of course, was Brayden yawning and stretching the whole way.  While we weren't racing to get everything in the car we were a little hurried, anticipating another wave of rain soon.  We were packed and leaving the campground by 6:20!  Might be a new record, but boy was I going to have sleepy children later!

Leaving so early actually put is perfectly on time for an early tour of the Lincoln home in Springfield.  Those of you along with us for our first trip 3 years ago remember this stop, but the kids couldn't seem to. It was only 30 minutes out of the way so it was a perfect place to spend the morning.  Once we got there Brayden vaguely remembered it because of the gabby gift shop guy!  After buying a bunch of postcards, we headed to the home to enjoy learning a little more about Abe.  While I'm sure the rangers have a script, each one always has a little bit more trivia to add so the tours are always a little bit different. The look on the kids' faces was priceless when the guide told us to make sure to hold the hand rail on the way up the stairs as it is the original handrail to the house and the one Abraham Lincoln also held on his way up. American History is going to be so fun to study this year!

There were several guides in period costumes ready to teach everyone games kids played at the time Lincoln's kids were younger.

This game actually taught kids how to gently milk a cow but the girls remembered it from a science kit at the Mess Hall!

My Bloomberg family reunion was scheduled for later this evening so we decided to get on the road to get settled into our next site so they would still have some time to play before we needed to go. The further north we get the parks seem to get more and more lush.  Brayden also has determined they are more and more full of daddy long legs - his camping nemesis.  So when we opened the tent and four of them scampered out of the middle after being cramped up for 8 hours he completely withdrew from tent set up today.  He so creeped out that he's even got Ryan - the animal whisperer - nervous now.

After setting up and sharing some sandwiches we relaxed until reunion time.  Armed with pecans from our stop at Priesters in Alabama, we headed to the town where my dad grew up.  The drive was so very similar to all of Illinois for us so far with massive corn fields on both sides of the road.  This drive added hundreds of graceful wind turbines to the mix and the kids were amazed.  I had to stop to get a picture of this area just to be able to remember the beautiful landscape of our drive.

As I looked down at the GPS I was certain that I was lost as it showed we only had 2 minutes left and we were still in the middle of the farms!  With 2 turns however, we were in the middle of a tiny village at their community center with 35 people who knew me but I had no idea who they were.  My uncle and his family from Los Angeles was there so as we walked in, he escorted us back out for a grand tour of the houses of the family.  I could picture my dad running around causing all kinds of trouble at each of them.

Everyone was so welcoming and patient with my exceptionally shy kids so we ended up having a great time.  The oldest Bloomberg there was 89 and the youngest was 2.  The food was delicious and the company was wonderful.  It's funny how we don't get much interaction with anyone other than our little traveling family of four for so long how nice it is to talk and listen to my kids talk to others!  It was especially interesting to hear about a cousin's trip to Sweden to research our family's history to learn that our family is actually in a line of Swedish royalty.  Laney perked up when she heard when she gets married that she is welcome to request and wear the royal crown.  Wow!

When all three of my kids get clingy they are definitely exhausted so we bid everyone farewell and headed back to our beds.  Everyone wished us well on the rest of our trip and thanked us for coming all that way.  It was a great experience for me especially but I think the kids as well.  There were very excited to open presents from my uncle and his wife on the way home!  We are a family that has a ton of games but they just happened to find the perfect ones we didn't already have!  The girls were giggling as they were trying to draw on their "World's Tiniest Etch-A-Sketchs" too!

I promised I'd read a few chapters and the kids calmed down within seconds to listen so I knew they were going to be out quick.  The book is getting good, but not enough to request "just one more chapter?" from these tired kids!