"Our challenge isn’t so much to teach children about the natural world but to find ways to sustain the instinctive connections they already carry." - Terry Krautwurst
Monday, June 28, 2021 - Wednesday, June 30, 2021
I wanted to do this live as we were traversing westward and northward. But any parent of two super young kids will tell you that having even the tiniest bit of free time is pretty much impossible. Free time on a road trip is impossible.
This is something that has been on my mind since we first started this trip. I wanted to chronicle this journey. I wanted to highlight the good and talk about the bad. Taking two kids under the age of three 1,000+ miles and 16+ hours away from home, from routine, from what makes life easy, is quite the experience to put it simply.
When things were tough, I'll tell you we felt like calling it quits, turning around, and saying something like, "maybe in five years." But when things were good, when the girls were having the times of their young lives, we wouldn't have traded anything for that.
That's parenting. That's what makes these trips worthwhile. That's what makes others shake their heads when they hear what we're doing and what we've done (and to be honest, we do a lot of head-shaking ourselves).
But seeing our girls out in the wild, away from that routine, enjoying themselves in a place that's so foreign to them, that's what this trip was about.
There was good. There was bad.
But in the end, there were two kids, two parents (and some who would say just a couple of kids themselves), and a dog making their way to the Upper Penninsula of Michigan and back again in about two weeks. This is what we did during the summer of 2021...
Over the winter of 2020-2021, we purchased something that Cara and I had been eyeing up for some time: an A-frame pop-up camper.
Don't get us wrong, we love tent camping. We loved it on our road trip. We loved it when we trekked up to Maine with a nine-month-old Acadia, and we still talk about the day we will be able to do it again. But there's something about being able to roll into a campground, push the roof up, prop this wall up, prop that wall up, and have a bed already made and your belongings right there next to you.
When you have two young kids, this is crucial. You don't lose time, energy, and patience (well, that still might happen) in setting up a tent site. This camper isn't anything special - there isn't satellite TV, bunk beds, or a game room. We didn't want that - for us or for the kids. It has water and gas hookup options, a bed on one side and a kitchenette that breaks down into another bed on the other side. Everything else is a counter for us to store things. It's a sturdy "tent on wheels." And we're completely fine with that.
So, destination no. 1 on this trip was Indiana Dunes. We visited this area back in 2016 on our cross-country road trip. At that time, we stayed in a campground outside what was then just a state park and enjoyed. We still talk about it. Now, it's a National Park, and we switched campgrounds to stay in the National Park itself.
We were coming from Pittsburgh, and our best estimates put this at about a 6-6:30 hour trip. Throw in some stops at random playgrounds, rest areas, and another National Park (Cuyahoga Valley) that we'd literally be driving through, and this was set to be a long day - much longer than six hours.
But it's day number one. What could go wrong?
Answer: nothing while we made a small pit-stop in CVNP to see some waterfalls and gain intel for our stay there at the end of this road trip.
But by the time we were seven or eight hours into this trip, the kids were getting grumpy, and storm clouds were rolling in, we knew we had pushed our limits.
We eventually rolled into Indiana Dunes National Park after about nine hours of travelling. We learned a very harsh lesson this day when it comes to travelling with young ones: don't do more than like a third of that in a day's travel. We also learned a very harsh lesson when it comes to owning a pop-up: if water issues haven't been fixed, then you don't want water anywhere near said pop-up.
Those storm clouds I mentioned earlier? Lightening. Thunder. Rain. Downpour. Water. Water everywhere. Creeping in through the one wall. Baby crying. Kid anxious to get out. Mom yelling this. Dad yelling that. Wet towels for days.
Lily, any thoughts?
Same.
We legitimately considered packing it in right then and there. We'd take a day or two and make our way back to central Pennsylvania. Maybe stay at a hotel or two along the way. Cut our losses and try again later.
But the rain stopped. We thought we had figured out how the rain was getting in and stopped the worst of it (it'd need more work after this trip, but we could probably get by).
And the kids stopped crying. They started to get into the camper and life on the road.
And this was the longest one-day journey of the whole trip. Nothing would be as long as this one for the rest of the way back home.
Maybe we could do this.
The first night was rough. Kids are out of routine, and they haven't figured out how to sleep in that camper bed. And, yes, we were all in that queen-size bed - Lily, included - every night. The girls wouldn't have it any other way.
That meant they wouldn't get the best night of sleep. It also meant they'd have trouble napping the next day. Even after attempting to tire them out with playgrounds, mini-hikes, and rocking back-and-forth, we just couldn't get them to take their nap. So, we figured we'd just head to the dunes on Lake Michigan and do some sand and water activities.
It's less than a five-minute drive there.
And there's your nap.
They eventually woke up and enjoyed their time there.
Later on, in the evening, we took Lily to a dog-friendly beach where she could roam the shoreline and chase rocks that Acadia threw into the lake. All involved had a blast.
And that was our first full day on this road trip. That day - day number two - went a little bit better than departure day.
Maybe those storm clouds were retreating and this trip would be what we had hoped for. The girls were smiling a little bit more. Lily was getting some thrills in. And I think mom and dad even had a few laughs.
We were only scheduled for one more night in Indiana Dunes National Park. We'd have some dinner, eventually get the girls to sleep, and then we'd wake up, pack up, and get on our way into Wisconsin.
The next stop on this wild road trip of ours would have us hug the shoreline of Lake Michigan for quite a bit before cutting inland just hair to stay at a Council Grounds State Park.
Driving time was estimated to be around 5:30 hours - about an hour less driving than Pittsburgh to Dunes - so hopes were high that things may go smoother than getting out here.
But we'd already committed to this trip, so we'd just have to roll with it.
Up next: a wooded campground next to a dammed river (and a playground!) in Wisconsin before hitting the furthest point from home in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan.
No comments:
Post a Comment