Deckerville, Michigan

Forester Park

August 11th through August 12th, 2012

Saturday, August 11th, 2012 - 66/61°, Rainy

    This camping trip really wasn’t in the works for very long – we had originally planned on skipping the Morris Family reunion held today in order to stay home and work on the house. Once we learned that my cousin Timmy would be coming home for a little over 24 hours to see some of the family, we decided to make the effort to head north once again and see him and to meet his girlfriend Kristen.

    Since we decided to attend the reunion, we had to get up and get ready to leave at a fair hour in the morning. The food was being served at 1:00pm, and of course we were running behind! We left our house a little before 11:00am, but as we pulled out of the driveway I realized that I had a text from my Mom asking me to bring up an old board game, Hotels, so that Tim could play. After a quick u-turn to pick up the game we were finally on our way!

    We needed to stop once for fuel, so we planned to stop at the Kroger station in Imlay City. This worked for two reasons… 1) we could fill the truck up, which would satisfy an obvious need, and 2) we could go inside the store to buy the meats for our lunch – brats and hot dogs, which would be cooked at the reunion. While we were inside I also bought a pair of sunglasses, since I had carelessly left mine at work in my rush to get the heck out of their last night!

    We also stopped at McDonald’s in Imlay City to get everyone a small snack to tide us over until we got to the reunion. In our rush to get out of the house this morning most of us (especially me) had neglected eating breakfast. I settled on some of the chicken McBites, while the kids all got french fries. The remainder of our drive was smooth, with the exception of the garage sale deal seekers clogging up M-25! Driving slow, using no blinkers, driving us nuts!

    We arrived at the reunion a little after 1:00pm, but Tara, Drew, and I had to head to the campground to take care of some stuff. Tyler, Samantha, and Jayden stayed behind with Dad & Mom. We left them with the food as well, so that it could be cooked and they could eat. We returned before 2:00pm and joined the rest of the family for a bite to eat.

    Tyler, Sam, Drew, and Jay all changed into their swimsuits after eating, and braved the cool weather to jump into the pool. Not many adults were hanging out outside, instead choosing to stay inside the garage where the temperature was much more comfortable, but we made sure one of us always stayed outside to keep an eye on the kids. To our surprise, Tyler and Sam were the first two to give up swimming, deciding that it was too cold both outside and in the pool. Drew and Jay managed to tough it out much longer than either of their siblings. In fact, Drew was the one who stayed in the pool for the longest, by a long shot. We tried to bribe him with ice cream to get out of the pool, but that wasn’t enough to get him out (OK, he did get out long enough to eat a bowlful, but then it was right back in!). It wasn’t until just before we left that he finally agreed to get out of the water. He was doing great today in the water, though. He was swimming with no floatation devices of any kind. The only thing he was wearing was a small pair of goggles to help he see (he tried it without the goggles as well, but found it too hard to see without them). I was so proud of the progress he has made in the pool this summer – at the start of the year he wouldn’t put his head under water at all, now he is swimming! Awesome job, Drew!

    As seems to be the case the past few years, Tara, the kids, and I were the last ones to leave the reunion. We thanked Renee and Jim for their hospitality before making the drive back to the park. On our way we stopped at a roadside park so that I could take a few photographs of some freighters on Lake Huron. They were in much closer than they typically are, and the only reason I can conceive of as to why is that the weather out on the lake must have been rough. It had been raining today and for the past few days, and it looked like there were storms occurring on the water while I was taking pictures.

    After I was done with my pictures we finished our drive to Forester Park. Thankfully this time there was electricity in the park, so we didn’t have to worry about entertaining everyone and finding something to eat. We didn’t really plan on a dinner plan for today, so having to whip something up without power might have been a bit of a problem. Unfortunately we really didn’t have any dinner ideas either… we eventually settled on ordering a pizza from the bar down the road. After a 45 minute wait (it was no Hot ‘N Ready, that’s for sure!), during which we occupied ourselves by sitting around the campfire, we were ready to pick up dinner. The pizza, when it arrived thanks to Tara picking it up, was rather tasty, though a little greasy. I actually could see ordering it again.

    By the time we finished eating it was getting dark. During the week Dad, Mom, Sherry, Julie, and Terry had done some shopping. One of their purchases was one of those lantern things with the fire in them. This was destined to be our evening entertainment once the kids found out that we had them.

    Although we had occasional bouts of rain and some light wind throughout the evening, we caught a break when we headed outside to set off the lantern. Tyler and I somehow ended up in charge of this particular activity tonight, so after opening up the lantern we headed to an open spot in the playground behind our campsite – one that was free of trees and other obstructions in the sky. The first thing that we had to do was light the lantern, which didn’t take long at all. Step two was the most challenging, as we had to hold the lantern until it fully inflated. This doesn’t sound too bad, but the flames at the bottom get kind of big and I was getting very nervous that they were going to hit the tissue paper sides of the lantern (these operate exactly like a hot air balloon, inflating the top with hot air from the flame below). We managed to get it inflated without incident, though, and let it go. It didn’t take long to lift off into the sky (despite the opposite thoughts from some of our peanut gallery!). It headed up and out over the trees towards Lake Huron. It was visible for quite some time in the dark night sky before we finally lost sight of it through the trees.

    It was getting late (nearing 11:00pm, late for those of us who work second and had to get up early today or those of us who had a late night flight from three time zones away – that would be Timmy and Kristen, not me), so we decided that it was time to head inside and call it a night. Julie & Terry had been in our camper for the past week, but they had to rise way before sunrise to drive to Metro Airport to catch their flight home, so they decided to stay at Dad & Mom’s tonight. Sherry did as well, as did Steve, like they had been doing all week anyway. Tyler also stayed there tonight, just to free up some space in our trailer for Tim and Kristen. All in all, between the two campers, we managed to “comfortably” sleep 14 people! In ours it was Tara, Tim, Kristen, Sam, Drew, Jay, and myself while Dad, Mom, Sherry, Julie, Terry, Steve, and Tyler stayed in the other camper. Talk about a full house!

Sunday, August 12th, 2012 - 77/58°, Cloudy

    Tim and Kristen were the first up in our camper today, sneaking out sometime around 8:00am. They had some things that they wanted to do in the area, so it makes sense that they got the early start. The rest of us managed to sleep in a bit longer (ok, I guess technically Jayden was up first – she was up at 7:30am for some reason, but she did manage to go back to bed and fall asleep for a while longer) before we started to get up and get moving. We worked on getting showers, getting dressed for the day, and eating breakfast. Mom had made two pans of cinnamon rolls this morning, but her oven wasn’t heating fast enough to make both of them, so Tara cooked one of them in our oven. After we ate what we wanted out of it, we took it over for the others to enjoy.

    Over in Dad & Mom’s camper, Julie and Terry had left long before sunrise. Everyone else was stirring before Tara & I climbed out of bed. I am not sure of everything that took place in there today, but I do know that Sherry took Tim and Kristen to a relative’s farm to do some cow milking and to ride in a tractor (and who knows what else… maybe shovel some manure?!?).

    Since we were leaving today, we decided to work on packing up the camper after we had finished our showers. Tara focused on putting away things on the inside of the camper while I worked outside, putting away tablecloths and everything else that we had used last night. Cleanup didn’t take long, but before we knew it lunchtime was upon us.

    We didn’t really plan ahead for a meal today, but we were able to pull together all of the supplies to make tacos, which is one of the meals that my family in Florida always seem to enjoy when my Mom makes them. We sat down to eat, but once dinner was over it was time to get headed out. We were already well beyond our 1:00pm checkout time (don’t worry – we called ahead to ask if it would be ok first), and we didn’t want to push our luck too long. Tara & I headed back over to take care of a few last minute things – putting away the water hose and the electrical cords, running in the slides and hooking the camper to the truck. We only had one minor issue when taking care of these items, though. The two electrical cords that we hooked together to reach the electrical box had melted together! We can only guess as to why this happened, and we are leaning towards the power outage as the cause. Luckily I was able to pull them apart and clean up the rubber around the prongs. I suppose I ought to look into getting a surge protector for the camper after this experience!

    Once we were on the road we had a very smooth drive. We didn’t make any bathroom stops on the way home, and traffic was light. Once we were home, I even managed to back the camper into our driveway as opposed to pulling in and turning it around in the back yard! Now, if only I can get it cleaned like I plan to do…

Trip Summary

    There isn’t really much to summarize about this trip. The kids enjoyed themselves at the reunion, although it would have been more fun for everyone had the weather been nicer. It was great for Tara & I to see Timmy again and to meet his girlfriend Kristen, we just wish we could have spent more time with them. And we wish the whole trip could have been longer, but working second shift ruins the Friday part of the weekend, and Tara having to be at work on Monday morning means that we can’t extend it any further either.