End of camp, beginning of vacation

To write about our vacation in Michigan, I first have to write about the end of camp. For the past two days, we’ve had only one child at home. It took both Jayda and I a full day to get used to this feeling. It was one of the few times in her life that she hasn’t been surrounded by siblings, and she wasn’t quite sure how to react.
Her only-child grumpiness was compounded by the fact that Kent and I were busy trying to prepare for our vacation. We had a few obstacles to overcome:
We would be staying in a cabin at a campground. The meant we would need to take our own sheets, towels, pillows and anything required to cook our food. We would pack our camping stove, as well as pots and pans, not to mention my beloved crock pot.
We were determined to take our bikes, although we weren’t quite sure how we would accomplish this. We had to find a way to transport five bikes and a bike trailer in addition to all of our luggage, sheets, towels and cooking supplies.
We would be leaving for vacation straight from summer camp, which means the kids would have suitcases full of nothing buy DIRTY clothes!
And finally, we had to be at camp at 9 a.m., with everything loaded onto our car, and a 2.5 hour drive to get there.
Somehow, we did manage to accomplish all of this, and it was completely worth it when we walked up to the breakfast area and saw our kids finishing up their morning meal. We got to spend some time talking to their camp counselor, attending a final chapel with them and hearing all of their stories from the past week.



For the next couple of hours, we didn’t need any entertainment in the car. The three of them talked non-stop about all of their adventures from the past week.

We drove about four more hours through northern Wisconsin and into Michigan where we stayed for the night. We had booked a room in the town of Escanaba, Michigan, at a Comfort Suites where we were pleasantly surprised to find a nice indoor pool with a water slide.



The kids asked if we could stay in this place for the rest of the week, but we had some other adventures in store.