Bay City, Michigan

October 7th through October 9th, 2005

Friday, October 7th - 58°, Partly Cloudy

    Once Tara finished working for the day, she came home to eat lunch. After that we loaded up the Trailblazer and headed over to Dad & Mom's house to get the truck and fifth wheel. We managed to pull out of their driveway almost on time, which for us is as close as it gets to being on time. Like last time, we met up with Jeff, Becky, Thomas, & their cousin Ellie on the expressway, north of the I-75/475 split. The drive went smoothly, without any stops.

Saturday, October 8th - 51°, Cloudy

    Since it was after midnight before we finally got Drew settled in enough to go to sleep, we were hoping he might sleep in some today - to no avail. He woke us up around 7:45am today, after which we got up and ate a small breakfast in the trailer. The kids were really bugging us to get outside already, but there weren't many people out and about, plus it was pretty frigid outside, so we got them to sit down and watch the Roger Rabbit movie. Once that was almost over, they had seen enough and were ready to go. Armed with our new extension cords, I set out to put up the Halloween lights that we brought. I already didn't expect any prizes for decorating, but after seeing some of the other sights I knew that was definitely an impossibility, but I put them up anyway.

Sunday, October 9th - 62°, Mostly Sunny

    Today was checkout day, which was scheduled for 1:00pm. Since there were no park employees on the premises today, there really was no hurry in leaving. Drew woke up again at 7:00am, but Tara managed to get him to fall back asleep. I got up around 9:00am and began taking down the decorations. Once everyone else woke up, we all got together again and had breakfast, with us actually eating around 11:00am. After our meal, we began the process of packing up. Mike, Kris, and their kids were the first to leave. It was around 1:30pm before we got in line to use the dump station, after which we followed Jeff, Becky, Thomas & Ellie to McDonalds for lunch. After we ate, we headed out and hit the expressway to head home.

    We dropped Adam off in Flushing before we finished the drive to my parent's house with the fifth-wheel. We cleaned out most of our stuff, made dinner, and then headed home to retire for the night.

Trip Summary

    I think everybody involved in our camping group this weekend enjoyed themselves, and would do it again. Tara & I both agreed that we would pack warmer, meaning winter coats (plus hats and gloves) and long underwear. Of course the nicest day weather-wise was Sunday, but overall it could have been worse (rain or snow!).

    I should also note that we took our dog, Tahoe, camping with us for the first time. We had been hesitant to do so, because of fears of her barking, even though she isn't much of a barker at home, especially while we were gone. I must say, that had we known how well she did, we probably would have taken her on other trips as well. No barking at other dogs, even those that were near and barking at her. No howling while she was alone in the fifth-wheel (we had asked Jeff & Becky to listen for her while we ran to Wal-Mart). All things considered, she did great.

    The worst part about the weekend was that we weren't truly able to set up camp together. For some reason we couldn't reserve a specific site, which we were able to do the last time we camped here. Odd. Maybe next year we will head up on Thursday to try and get three site together. Otherwise everything went pretty smoothly - I even managed to park the camper without backing in-and-out a hundred times!