...is an understatement.
Let me start at the beginning. The very beginning.... a very good place to start.
It all started on Tuesday of last week when I called Sleeping Bear National Lakeshore to confirm that we would have no trouble getting a campsite without a reservation for the coming weekend. You might ask, "Jacki, why didn't you just make a reservation?" Allow me to answer that. Our national government only allows a certain number of reservable campsites per campground. The ones that were designated "reserved" had all been snatched up for the weekend.
Now, back to my conversation with the park ranger lady....
She replied, "oh, no...you should have no problem ma'am."
Don't call me "ma'am".
So, the Schoebs (our camping buddies) get ahead of us on this journey 4 hrs and 22 minutes to the north of the SE Michigan rat race we call home. They arrive at the campground approx. 10 minutes before us. My cell phone rings and Jayson says, "hey Jacki, they only have one site left and we can only have 6 people on a site (we have a total of 9 camping with us) what are we gonna do?" I'm ticked! Did that crazy ranger lady not tell me we should have no problem two days prior? Yes...yes...she did.
So we are able to get two walk in sites. What's a walk in site? Well, that is a site in which you hike your gear into the site several hundred yards. In our case it was about 200 yards. We take them because we have no choice. We have just driven 4 hrs and 22 minutes. With 5 children. We are tired and we want to climb the dunes and swim on the glorious shores of Lake Michigan. And eat a s'more!
So we do it! We hike two truck loads of gear to two adjoining camp sites. We set up four tents and misc other camping gear. For about 3 hours. Min and I head off for fire wood make a wrong turn and literally the road dead ends into Lake Michigan. It's not as pretty as last time I was here but still I could close my eyes and imagine I was somewhere tropical.
We grab the firewood and head back for our hot dogs, s'mores and pudgie pies.
We clean up that mess.
We played silent football.
Usually this is where we would load all the perishable things in the car for the night, however, it was 200 yards to the car because of the park ranger lady that lied to me so we loaded the food and other supplies in an extra tent.
We take showers and head for bed.
Pretty relaxing and uneventful.
Kurtis and I are laying in the tent reading and he says, "Oh man, I forgot to put on the rain fly. Should we put it on?" To which I replied, "Nah...it never rains when we camp and it will just make it hot." Let's leave it off."
You know where this is going don't you....Keep reading though.....
So, I never sleep well camping. I really prefer camping at the Four Seasons but I'm a trooper and my family likes camping so I like camping. I toss and turn all night long. Abi and I watch the racoons rummage through our trash (because Kurtis also forgot to take the trash to the dumpster-camping 101) and they fought over it for like an hour. I maybe slept a couple of hours. I'm finally having happy dreams of being somewhere....well, somewhere...else...and it happens. No warning AT ALL!!!
BUCKETS, I mean serious...BUCKETS of rain pours in from ALL SIDES of our tent. I yell at Kurtis to grab the rain fly (which is in the tent) he grabs it and goes out in his unders to put it on. He has this head lamp thing that we bought for caving on his head and I have no flashlight so I just stand still and hold it up off the ground. We are soaked!!! The stuff in our tent is soaked. Everything is a good ol' fashioned SOAKFEST!!!
We hear the Schoebs in their tent laughing so we assume they have their fly on and have just been witnessing the stupidity of the Minneys.
I check my clock on my cell to see that it is 6:07am. You are kidding me!!!
Paige has to go to the bathroom so I grab a jacket and hike up to the bathroom with her. (I really wish I was a guy sometimes!)
When I get back both camps are up and the damage is being assessed.
Food tent-no fly-lids on some of the tubs containing food but pretty much soaked.
Schoeb tent-no fly. Status-soaked.
Chairs-soaked.
Clothes-soaked-they were in the tent with us.
Kids-soaked.
Grownups-soaked.
We are done. We decide we are going to head home because everything is soaked. So, we begin that process which takes about 2 hours. It has temporarily stopped raining so we begin breaking things down. Things are packed and loaded near the cars. Notice I said, NEAR and NOT IN the cars.
Yip, rain again. And everything is soaked again.
Jayson says to me, "I think I am too old for camping". And I can't agree more.
We load up...Minneys head home...Schoebs take their kids on to the dunes. When we get home we get to unpack everything again. Set up two tents again so that they can air out from the soakfest. We also have to unload all the gear so that it can dry out so that it doesn't mold and stink so that when we go camping again in 10 years we have it at the ready.
Mindy and I figured out we spent more time actually packing/unpacking, driving and planning this camping trip than we actually did camp. And I didn't even set foot on the dunes or the beach.
Pics of this fabulous journey are
here and I'm sure Min will have more but I wasn't much in the pic taking mood.
