Some of my family have been doing a fall camping trip and this year, we decided to attend. It ended up being 44 people, I guess technically all family since most were by marriage. But my mom and stepdad, my brother and his family and my family all went. It had been raining pretty steadily since Wednesday night but it was supposed to be done by Friday night. Once the kids got off the bus, we headed out. Our little caravan consisted of my stepdad’s truck pulling his camper, my sister-in-law’s suv, my brothers jeep wrangler, me driving my moms minivan and my brother’s friend. I was following my brothers Jeep because he needed someone with decent reflexes behind him because his Jeep tends to go into what is a called, a death wobble (it’s a thing, Google it) occasionally and the only thing you can do to get it to stop is slow down.
So we are driving down the bypass, doing about 65 mph. We are passing a semi that is moving a little slower. My stepdad gets over in front of it, then my sister-in-law and my brother. Finally I get behind him and before his friend can get in behind me, the death wobble occurs. My brother slams on his brakes and pulls off the side of the road, I slam on my brakes and start to go over, then I glance in my rear-view mirror and see the semi right on my ass so I floored it. Needless to say, my brother was playing catch up the rest of the trip.
We made it up there ok and set up camp. Had some burgers with mac and cheese and cowboys beans for supper. Pretty much just hung by the camp fire all evening. It was a little chilly but considering we usually end up camping when it’s 90° so we can deal with a little chill. Cheri and I both slept like crap, and our air mattress had a leak because we woke up on the ground. Saturday, we took some time to go to the beach (Lake Michigan) because with the wind, we could hear the waves from our campsite and we wanted to check it out. So everybody walked and Cheri and I drove on down to see these.
I have never seen the waves like that there. Not that I go up every week or anything, but I have been up off of the lake quite a bit of times. You can see a 6 second Vine video here, or at least I hope so. My brother said his dogs were too afraid to go near the water. As you can see in the picture, it was a pretty clear day and sure enough, look what you could see on the other side of the lake.
Yup, that would be the Chicago skyline, and pretty clear at that. Cheri and I didn’t stick around long, it was just too cold. When everyone got back to the campsite, we started setting up for some more Saturday activities. What’s a Saturday without some college football?
What? It’s too cold for the beach and there wasn’t really anything else to do. The intention of taking all of this equipment was to watch the Michigan/UCONN game but because it was on local ABC, the WatchESPN app blacked it out and we couldn’t watch it anyways. Don’t even get me started with that. They need to realize that not everyone can be home in front of their TV’s to watch the game, they need to realize that there are all kinds of devices to watch TV on and quit with the blackout restrictions. Oops, I got started. There’s more but I won’t get into that. By the end of the afternoon games, we moved the table next to the fire (good thing the cousins weren’t there) because it was getting colder and we needed some warming up.
For supper, everyone brought enough chili for their family and we threw them all in a huge pot and cooked it all together. We pretty much hung around the fire all evening before crashing on our air mattresses for the night. My mom and step dad ran into town and got us a new one and we slept a whole lot better.
Sunday morning we packed up and left. It was a good weekend but we are beat. I’m looking forward to sleeping in my bed tonight. Trevor spent a lot of time playing his video games so that wasn’t much different from staying home. He did run around with other kids on Sunday morning so he got some play time with others. I didn’t really see Samantha much all weekend, she hung out with her cousin and she was chasing the boys that were with the group. The kids both said they had a good time and that’s what the trip is all about. Got to head back to the grind tomorrow, and it’s a long week on top of that.
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