Sadly, all good things must come to an end and with this post, so will our camping saga. I think I've procrastinated this post because spending time remembering how wonderful it was has gotten me through a few rough days. Of course, that was greedy of me and I know y'all have been waiting. So without further ado...our last day...

Morning came early at camp and like the day before, it was a misty day that promised more rain. Justin and I made an executive decision to not even try to make breakfast at camp but to pack it all up and grab something to eat on the way home. I think that's when chaos started to happen, but in some ways, it was a controlled chaos. Our biggest problem was that so much was covered in dirt and mud. Justin was fabulous about rinsing off what he could at the outside tap. I confess that I got a little frustrated as I watched him load the van.

Ok, maybe it was quite a bit frustrated. You see, in certain areas, I can be a total control freak. One of those areas is organization. It's really hard for me to step back and say ok, you handle it. Since he was clearly capable of putting things in the back of the van, I took a few deep breathes and worked on having the kids help me pack things up so that they'd be ready to go into the van. Surprisingly, I think it only took about an hour for us to get packed up, checked out and on the road....I didn't get a picture of the back of the van, but here's one of the boys riding home. You can see the back of the van when I was looking back at them.


As you can also see, a lot of "friends" came along for the trip or were picked up during the trip. The handsome guy in that right picture is Teddy. He was given to me about 5 years ago and he travels most everywhere with us.

If you remember, back on Day 2, I told you that there was no way we were going through Normandy  the wilds of Northern Michigan. Instead, we decided to take 23 South.  It's honestly a lovely drive and if you ever get the chance, I highly recommend it. The road follows Lake Huron for miles and miles and the views are just beautiful.

About 10 miles from camp, while staring out over the water, I realized we had forgotten to go to the lighthouse. We had planned on stopping there on the way home since it was only about 4 miles in the wrong direction. Sadly, we forgot and instead went on to breakfast. As I mentioned in a previous post, Justin doesn't like chain restaurants. It's just as well since I don't think there are any in Rogers City. Instead, we found this great little polish restaurant and enjoyed breakfast together.


Ok, this would be Roger enjoying the tv far more than his family but as I discovered on this trip, if there's a tv, that kid (and probably me..yep, I'm guilty too) will probably be watching it. I wish I could remember the name of this restaurant. I would completely recommend it if for no other reason than you need to go in and check out their fridge. It's awesome. Trust me.

After breakfast, it was back on the road. We drove and we drove and we drove...well, you get the point. It was nice though. We all talked about the trip and about where we want to go next year. The GPS didn't take us anywhere crazy for ages. It was just nice. We even got to watch part of a parade from a distance!

I know you want to know how that happened, right? Well, we were driving along and suddenly came to a dead stop. At first, we thought it was just because there was a super awesome craft fair going on and traffic was slowed down while people crossed the road. Nope. It turns out that there was a parade happening right in front of us. I wish I'd snapped a picture out the window of the craft fair. We saw some great things from the view of the van. I think this was especially hard for Roger and myself. We both really badly wanted to get out and check out all of the booths. In fact, I think I looked back the entire time we drove through town but Justin was stronger than the both of us and on we drove.

Along the way home, we stopped at no less than 3 different state parks. Why? I have to say it's because I have the greatest man in the world. The state of Michigan had produced a passport stamp book that gave descriptions and all the information about the different state campgrounds. Our camp had run out of them and Justin kept stopping at different parks trying to get one for me. We never did get one but what I found out was that he was also asking about lighthouses so that I would get to see one. At Tawas Point, I got my wish...







We didn't go into the lighthouse because they charged a fee to tour it and none of us were really interested. Instead, Roger and I walked down towards the beach while Justin and Ben hung out on the bench and relaxed. It was lovely. The weather was perfect and I was with my 3 favorite guys. After a quick trip through the gift shop where we bought a stuffed black crape and a book of Mad Libs, we were back on the road.

The drive after that was fun as we did Mad Libs about random vacation themes. My boys can certainly come up with some crazy words that make for some fun readings. Eventually though, all good things need a break and we decided to stop at an Arby's for lunch. Arby's is Ben's favorite place and he'd asked if we could stop so we stopped there to surprise them. Getting out of the van, I had to take this picture. We figured that this poor car must have been afraid of the parking space.


After a rather delicious lunch, we jumped back on the road and it wasn't long after that when silly GPS lady took us off into weird places again. Instead of just sticking to the highway or freeway, she decided we needed to cut cross country again. Before I knew it, we were wandering up and down side streets of Saginaw. Eventually, we found our way out of there and back to the state highway where we wandered through the desert for 40 days the back roads of Michigan as we made our way to my grandma's house.

It was so good to see her. She was laying down when we got there, but she was so happy to see us. She doesn't get to see any of us near enough and now that we don't know how much time we have left with her, I want to give her every opportunity to see us and especially my boys. It's hard to find the time, but it's something I have to do.

We spent a few hours there, talking about the trip and just talking about her life. It made me so happy to hear her sharing her stories with Justin and the boys. So many of them I've heard over the years, but I never grow tired of them. I love hearing how her and grandpa built the house. I love all of it and I love her.

Time goes by so fast when I'm with her and before I knew it, it was past the kids bedtimes and we loaded up the van to finish the drive to our house. When we got in, we sent everyone up to bed and left the van emptying til morning.That's a decision I'll never regret...it was almost fun getting everything unloaded the next day before we went to run last minute school shopping errands.

It's been a month now since that amazing camping trip. I'm already looking forward to next year. I have a shopping list of the things we still need. We have a location picked out and most importantly, it's another chunk of the most precious time ever, time with my family.


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Ahhh...another day of camping. I so wish we could go back. Maybe not right this minute. It's getting pretty cold out but I do wish I had my little family all in one place.

Now, if you recall, I mentioned that it rained some on Friday. Guess what? It rained a heck of a lot more Friday night. In fact, it poured. Now, like good campers, we had put everything that we didn't want getting wet into the van. What we didn't notice was that Roger had left his shoes outside their tent. What I also didn't realize was that Justin had left his outside of our tent. Granted, when we went to bed, the rain wasn't coming under the rain flap....

Sadly, by morning, that had all changed. The wind had shifted direction overnight and had soaked both of their shoes right through. While I was off taking a shower, Justin spoke with one of the camp caretakers and found out that Walmart was...wait for it....45 minutes away! Have you ever lived 45 minutes away from a Walmart? I live in the boonies and even I'm not that far from a Walmart. Well, if you've ever worn wet sneakers, you know just how miserable that is, so we loaded everyone up and we headed into Cheboygan.

Once there, we found the Walmart, bought new shoes for Justin, new socks for Roger (his shoes had dried out mostly by that point), a few odds and ends and then we headed across the street to Big Boy for some breakfast. Now, you might not find this funny, but I do. Justin is obsessed with not eating at chain restaurants. As in, we never eat at them. Unless..it's Big Boy. Seriously. I don't know what makes them the exception but they are. Of course, it's also taken me something like 5 years to convince him that it's just Big Boy, not Bob's Big Boy.

Ok, back to the story..did I leave the story? I dunno but either way, we're going back.forward..something. While eating our fairly delicious breakfast buffet at Big Boy, we decided to head all the way to Mackinac since it was only about 20 minutes away and Justin had never seen the bridge, let alone had the joy of driving across it.
 After breakfast, we loaded back up and back on the road! After a quick swing through Mackinac to find an atm machine, we headed up and over the bridge. Always looking for new educational opportunities, we turned the radio to the station telling us all about the history of the bridge. I didn't get a picture of it but we all found it really interesting that the water on one side of the bridge was a different color from the water on the other side. It was as if the bridge was a dividing line in more than just name.


After crossing, we drove up to Castle Rock. I hadn't been there in years and it hasn't changed at all! You still follow the giant footsteps through the shop and up the trail. It has been raining and none of us really wanted to hike all the way up so we explored the gift shop and then headed back down across the bridge. For those of you who haven't seen Castle Rock, I snapped a few pictures to show you.




I really wanted to buy the block in the first picture but Justin said no. It seems that I'm not allowed to cheat at my workouts. After a quick stop to admire the view of the bridge, we were back in the van and headed back to camp. Sadly, due to the time, we didn't get to stop by the apple orchard or the lighthouse. It was still a really great day though and it just made me all the more thankful for my family.










On the way back to camp, we had fun talking and daydreaming about us owning our own beach front house. We saw so many that were for sale. We even went so far as to talk about Justin opening up his search area to include up North. I wouldn't complain. I've always loved it up there. I'm not sure how we would possibly work it out with the boys' dad, but never say never, right?

Once we got back to camp, we realized that we needed to pick up some more wood. Unfortunately, there wasn't anyone at the office. That didn't stop Justin, though! He walked right over to the wood shed and snagged us a bundle of wood. I was a bit shocked until he assured me that he had left the money in there. Whew!

I don't know if I've mentioned it, but the boys had to earn their spending money for their trip. In the end, they both had $27 to spend. At the end of the day, they both had some money left, so after we parked, the family took a walk down to the Friends of the Park tent where Roger bought himself a t-shirt. It has the camp name and a fire embroidered on it. He wanted that one because it reminds him of us setting up and starting the fires together. I love that he wanted something that was special to something we had done together.

After struggling to get another fire started, we had a lovely dinner together. I was so proud of the boys. At the start of the trip, they were refusing to do anything with the fire. By the end of the trip, I didn't need to help them at all. They knew how to be safe around the fire. They knew how to cook their own hotdogs, marshmallows and even pizza. They grew up a little right in front of me.



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Wow, it's Wednesday already. I bet y'all thought I got lost on the trail somewhere and forgot to come back to tell you about the rest of our vacation! I didn't. It just got a bit busy here and I've not been able to make the time to write.

Now, where did I leave off? Oh yes, our very first camp fire. Well, I have to say that it was wonderful. I had so much fun teaching the boys how to build one and about camp site safety. Yep, I'm a teacher even when on vacation. I turn everything into something educational. My poor kids, eh?

Then, it was bedtime and my kids were surprised when I told them they were sleeping in their own tent. This was highly amusing for a few reasons:

1. We had talked about this many times.
2. They had loaded all of their things into their tent and laid it all out how they wanted it.
3. Umm...Ok, maybe just a couple of reasons.

Surprisingly, it didn't take them too long to get settled down. What amused me the most was their shock that I expected them to change their clothes inside the tent. Now, before you think they're a couple of nudists (trust me, this was the 1st summer I could convince them to run around without shirts on!), they expected to haul their things to the bathroom and back.


The next morning, we all got up and after a breakfast of cereal and fruit, we decided to head down to the beach. Wow, that walk was a lot further than it appeared! We walked over wood chips. We walked over boardwalk. We walked over sand. We finally got to the beach! There, we sat down on the one bench and slathered sunscreen all over us. I was not repeating last years' sunburn. Then, without warning, I heard ow! Ow! Mooom! Ow! It seems that not only do mosquitos love Ben, but so do biting flies. They were all over his legs! How do you get rid of biting flies? You get in the water!



And that folks, was our first full day of camping. I know that Justin reads this so hopefully he'll fill in any gaps that I've left. I need to hurry and get the rest of this down before I lose all the little things that I loved about this trip...

Tune in next time to hear Spongebob me say...How did your shoes get all wet anyway? and It's how far to Walmart?!?



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Let's see...in yesterday's driving saga, we had finally made it to the campground. I have to say that I wasn't sure what to expect. Of all the campgrounds along our lake shores, this one was the least booked for the weekend which made me a little bit nervous. After all, when I reserved our space, the campground was only 29% booked compared to 98% booked at all the other state parks.

Thankfully, I had nothing to fear. The campground was actually really nice. The staff were friendly, the spaces were nice and even the bathrooms were really well maintained. I wouldn't hesitate to camp there again, but the family voted and decided to try out a different state park each year. We're already planning on Wilderness State Park for next summer.

After checking in, we headed towards our campsite. It was only 2 spaces and across from the bathroom which was nice. I wanted something close to the beach path, close to the bathrooms and level. Our site met all of those! We got all pulled in and the next step? Setting up the tent....


This is the boys tent. I've set this one up a few times and can do it by myself in minutes so with some help, it went up really fast. This, however, is where we met up with our first "Things She Forgot To Pack" snafu. The ground here was really hard and silly me hadn't thought to get a rubber mallet for pounding in the stakes. What is he using, you might ask? Umm...a great big, giant plumber's wrench that was in the back of the van. Why? Because it belonged to my grandfather and when I took it from the house (I won't say how many years ago.) it somehow became housed in my van.

The other tent was a bit more complicated. It took Roger, Justin and myself to get it put together. It mostly took all 3 of us because we'd need 2 people to hold one section while the 3rd person moved another piece into place. I was so relieved when it was up and our campsite looked like this:





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Yesterday, I left off telling you about poor Roger's faceplant and us zonking out for the...morning? Today is all about the drive up north. Before you all walk away, let me remind you that this is me we're talking about and that means something had to have happened to make this trip memorable....

Oh wait! Before I get into that, I have to tell you one of the things that had slowed me way down at Meijer. When the boys and I walked into the store, something set off the security alarm. This isn't unusual. I've had this happen before and I've been told it's probably due to the high amount of electronics I carry in my bag (camera, cell phone, iPad, gps, etc). The lady at the door waved us through and we went about our shopping. When we went to leave, guess what, the alarm went off again. It was the same woman at the door and she waved us out. Except, the manager was leaving for the night and stopped us before I could get the cart rolling. The door woman came over and explained to her that we'd set it off coming in. I sure was hoping we were going to be allowed to leave. Nope. The manager asked me to raise my bag up. Now, at this point, I ought to mention that it was 12am, we were late and my bag was stuffed to overflowing in preparation for the drive the next day. I had books, magazines, the usual electronics, my wallet, etc...Sure enough, something in the very bottom was making it beep. I explained to her the electronics theory and she said nope. That just doesn't happen. She then proceeded to make me empty out the entire bag into the front of the cart. The culprit? A textbook from a used book site that Justin had ordered for me. It still had the security strip it in. Oy! So then, we crammed everything back in the bag and satisfied, she called for someone to walk her out and we left.


Now, as I was going to tell you....We dragged our groaning, tired bodies out of bed somewhere between 9 and 10am, I think. I know that it was around 10:30 when we finally got onto the road. After a quick stop of McDonalds and gas, we were on the road. Have I ever mentioned that I cannot do burgers for breakfast? Yeah, it just doesn't happen. I was happy though with my yogurt and oatmeal.


The first part of the drive was a typical drive. Nothing very exciting happened. We ate, we talked and at some point, I know we stopped to go potty at another McDonald's.  That's where I pulled out the iPad, borrowed their wifi and sent what would be my last tweet for a week.









This is just more of us driving...Ok, it's Google maps showing where we drove, but you get the idea. Nothing exciting happened until the GPS announced suddenly that we were leaving the freeway.

Yes, you read that right. Get off the freeway and onto a state highway. No big deal, I thought. It's just shortcutting us back to the freeway, right? Nope. The next thing I knew, we were being routed off onto a county route. I didn't even know we still had those in this state. We talked about it and agreed to follow Miss Bossypants GPS. After all, she ought to know where we're going, right? So, we kept driving...and driving...further into the middle of nowhere. I joke that I live in the middle of nowhere, but folks, this was seriously the middle of nowhere. No other cars, no houses, no anything....until we saw this....


and then this....




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