Camping Trip 2009

!-- @page { margin: 0.79in } P { margin-bottom: 0.08in } -->

My Parent's RV. Not pictured, our little tent.

Thursday

Arrived at the campground at around 1:30pm, and after a short break, proceeded to begin putting our tent up. Boring process (my dad says we are boring to watch put it up because we don't get into a fight during the process). After about a half hour of that, we get our mattress blown up for sleeping, and I go with my dad to search for the best deal on firewood around the area. Once I got back from that, there was some more random getting things together, before sitting down with my folks and my sister's family for dinner, tacos and soup, followed by a campfire with some s'mores. That night, the first night of course, it stormed and rain pretty hard. Lots of lightning, hard rain, but thankfully, not a lot of wind, so at least the little small tent didn't blow away with us in it; it just sustained a pretty constant pelting and gave us a nice shadow show of all the trees above it during every lightning flash. After getting maybe 2-3 hours of sleep, we successfully survived the first night in the tent. Only three more to go.

Friday

After waking up early, headed down to the showers to attempt to be the first to use one of the shower rooms (mission accomplished) and to avoi others (not so much, was greeted by two young boys who kept trying to open the door to that shower). After getting back, did some light reading for work before having a pancake and bacon breakfast with the family. After breakfast, Jackie and I headed out with my dad for a short bike ride, maybe 1-3 miles, somewhere in that range, just enjoying some of the scenery along the myriad of lakes. It was a good time, but considering Jackie and I haven't really ridden a bike in 8 years, it was a bit difficult coming back, particularly considering some of the hills.

Friday night almost deserves its own post. Right when we laid down in the tent, just before 11, it started raining. Didn't think anything of it as it had rained the night before and everything inside had stayed dried. Well, woke up at about 2:30 a.m. to an absolute downpour outside, I got up to adjust some of the tent "windows" and make sure they were snug, and when I got back into bed I realized that my feet were wet. Jackie started noticing some dripping from the tent above us, and when I grabbed my phone (to see what time it was), it was pretty wet. We whipped out the flashlight to look around, and discovered that, for whatever reason, it was raining so hard that a lot of the water was coming into the tent. So, at 3 in the morning, I rush out to moved things out the front seat of the Sportage, Jackie grabs Ellie, we attempt to use umbrellas to shield us from the monsoon around us, to little avail, and eventually end up in the front seat of our car, mostly wet, with a wet dog, watching the rain absolutely beat down on our tent. We spent the rest of the night in the car.

In the morning, we realized we had a fair amount of standing water in the tent that needed to be dried out, which took the rest of the weekend to fully accomplish. However, considering that both my sister and my parent's canopies were essentially ruined and destroyed by the rain, we probably came out pretty well. Also, Saturday and Sunday turned out to be excellent days.

Saturday

Spent the first part of the day working on drying out the tent. Then, following a later breakfast, we headed into the town of Pentwater to shop at some of our favorite little shops along the main drag, which is incredibly picturesque. Then we grabbed lunch at the Village Cafe, which has seating outside right on Lake Pentwater and next to the channel that leads out to Lake Michigan. Gorgeous view, the weather was in the low 70s with no clouds, just a perfect setting. Following that, we headed back to the campground and headed down to the swimming pool to enjoy the sun some more. Following dinner, we went with my parents back along a very winding road to an open beach on Lake Michigan, with maybe only few other groups there. Better yet, we were able to take Ellie with us to the beach. She loved the sand, although appeared to be slightly frightened by the waves (granted, they were as big as she was). We stayed and watched an amazing sunset over the Lake. Afterwards, back to the campground for a fire and more conversation.

Sunday

Our first dry night (thank God) and another beautiful day outside. We had to run up to Ludington to the Walmart to gather some drinks and random things, and spent most of the day relaxing at the campground, either talking with my parents or down at the swimming pool. After dinner, we headed down to the channel/pier from Lake Pentwater into Lake Michigan. It's one of our favorite spots, we go there every time we have been in Pentwater, and have some very fond memories of Toby there, sitting on the beach, having our picture taken as a family, etc., so it was very nice. It was another beautiful night, and fun to see Ellie experience other dogs and people. Then, one last campfire and some s'mores.

Despite Friday night (and it was really awful), the trip turned out pretty well. We got to use our recently acquired bikes very extensively for the first time, and bike riding in general for the first time in years. We got to see some wonderful sunsets, spent some good time with my family, and got some new memories with Ellie on our "family" vacation.