I'm also blogging because I've been meaning to get around to telling you about our family mini-vacation over the 4th of July. Yeah, that was the week where it was horribly hot and everyone was comparing it to the Dust Bowl era because of all the days the temperature hit 100 degrees or higher. That's the week we picked to go camping. And by camping, I mean real camping in tents--not that cheating kind of camping where people sleep in air-conditioned trailers. When we camp, we do it right.
We started by picking up Jay from my mom and dad's house where he's been the last month learning how to rebind books in leather at their family business, and then headed up north to Lake Michigan where we hoped the weather would be cooler. It wasn't. We spent most of the first day at Warren Dunes State Park, swimming in Lake Michigan. The water was perfect but the sand was HOT! We climbed the dunes, although a certain teenage child of ours who shall remain unnamed was mad at me the whole time because I wouldn't let her climb it in socks and made her put her shoes on. I'm a mean mother, I know. At the top, the kids buried their little brother in the sand and we had a difficult time unearthing him.
My favorite spot at the beach was just lying right at the edge so the waves could wash over me and keep me cool while I watched the kids building sandcastles and playing in the water. It was so beautiful and bright on the beach, but we had quite a bit of drive left to get to Holland in time to set up camp, so we finally trekked back across the sand (hot! hot! hot! hot!) and drove to our campsite at Drew's Country Camping. We didn't even bother changing out of our swimsuits. I just threw on a sundress over my bathing suit.
Normally when we camp, we go to a state park, but I hadn't made reservations in time to get a spot. I thought a week early was enough, but they were all full. So I found Drew's Country camping, which is a privately owned place. It only had a couple of reviews online, and they both gave it two out of five stars, but we were just happy to have a place. I really don't know why it was reviewed so poorly--we thought it was just fine. The spots were nice and shady, even though the grass was a bit crunchy. I don't think that was Drew's fault, though. There was a nice-sized swimming pool, and the owner cleaned it every morning. The bathrooms were clean, too--or at least they were until I changed into clothes and approximately 200 lbs. of sand fell out of my bathing suit onto the floor.
While we were in Holland, we visited Windmill Island. They have a real Dutch windmill that was disassembled and brought here from the Netherlands called De Zwaan, which means "The Swan." It's on a little island in the middle of a park, and they have lots of cute Dutch shops and other attractions in the park. We took a tour of the windmill and watched some Dutch dancers, although they had girls playing the boys parts. I was a little disappointed because I wanted to see some boy Dutch dancers, too. They did a nice job, though.
The rest of our trip was pretty much spent trying to stay cool. At one point we went to Menards just to loiter in their air conditioning. We went back to the patio display and sat in the chairs for awhile, hoping no one would ask us to leave. We also went to a park that was having a big 4th of July celebration and Jay and Abby entered a pie eating contest. It was too hot to stay long, though, so we went back to the camp so the kids could get back in the pool. Later on we returned for fireworks, but it was still hot even after dark. The lowest it got even at night was about 75 degrees, so it took awhile to get comfortable enough to fall asleep.
The trip home was downright miserable. As hot as it was in Michigan, it was even hotter in Indiana, and our van doesn't have air conditioning. Our clothes were wet with sweat and we smelled so bad by the time we got home that we had to have showers before going to bed, even though we had showered at the campsite that morning.
Still, we had fun. Going camping forces us to spend time together talking as a family. The kids can't go to their rooms or get on their iPods, and so they have nothing left to do but talk to us. We might not have had the best of weather for camping, but we have such a great family that just being together made it a good time.
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