2010 Camping Trip

I guess I should do a little intro before I begin telling the story of our trip. Believe it or not I had actually agreed to return to the same camping spot from last year near Turkey Run however they were under a severe heat advisory all of last week and we had to change places at the last minute.....and this is how it went.


Day 1-Thursday


Plan: Pick up Heather from work and be on the road between 3-3:30pm. Travel approximately 1.5 hrs to our destination. Set up site, make dinner and relax.


The Very Long Eventful Story: As with everything we left a little late and were on the road around 4pm. We had switched our location at the last minute to a place called Coolsprings Campgrounds in Cassopolis Michigan. The website looked awesome showing a great map of the grounds which included a beach, lake to go canoeing or paddle boating, a petting zoo and many primitive sites. This area was not experiencing the heat advisory that Indiana was under but it was by no means alot cooler. Heather & I being the stubborn ones did not want to cancel the trip because we had been planning it for weeks so we went.


The drive to the place was uneventful this year. It went by rather quickly and before we know it we were driving in this little town of Cassopolis. The lack of population did not bother me because as I have experienced on other camping trips most campgrounds are in the middle of nowhere. So we pull down the main road to our campgrounds and we were already planning to go swimming right after setting up the site and so excited and then we see it. First I see on one side of the road the little office building it was small and not that fancy but it was no big deal after all it was a campground. I then here Steven say "is that the beach?" and we all look over and see this approximately 8ft x 3ft sandy area on this so called lake. I wish for the the life of me we could have found our camera to take a picture because what I am about to describe will not even come close to doing it justice. We pull into the office which was now closed but we had been told that we could check ourselves in and they would come around and collect the next morning. The lady was kind enough to leave us a map of the area showing which sites were open that we could choose from. Now mind you I was told earlier in the week by this office that if we wanted a non-primitive site we should book in advance because they were pretty full but to us that was okay because we wanted to show how strong of a family we are and we were going primitive people. So I pull open this map and she has two....yes you heard it right...two sites marked off as being unavailable. I think this was my here's your sign moment when I should have jumped right back in the truck and left but no again my stubbornness kept me going. We all found it odd that one we were lied to about how many people were staying this weekend but of course had to give them the benefit of the doubt that everyone canceled at the last minute due to heat....yeah of course that was it. After reviewing the map we decided to take a walk into these primitive sites to see which one we wanted. Heather is chanting the entire time I want the furthest one into the woods while the others with their thinking caps on were trying to plan this out logically. Heather is a little over ambitious when it comes to trying to prove that we can handle anything. I mean don't get me wrong I love her faith in us but sometimes reality does not sink in until she is absolutely miserable so we gently remind her and come to a compromise that seems to benefit everyone. These primitive sites are only able to be reached by hiking to your site and it is in a very heavily wooded area. We had originally thought we would want to be up by this creek but that was short lived when we realized we would have to drag all of our gear up there and it was at least a 15 minute hike. After walking for a while we settled on site 42 which was about a 5 minute hike into the woods from our car and the shower house.


After we settled on a site we decided to take a walk of this campground to check out all of it's wonderful features as shown on their website before we unloaded the truck. So we hiked back to the office to fill out the form showing which site we chose. I did forget to mention that the humidity was unbelievable and in the maybe 20 minutes were were walking around we were soaked with sweat. I remember clearly while standing on the porch feeling beads of sweat roll down my back. I can tell you that I HATE sweating. There is only one time when sweating is appropriate and that is when I am working out. When I am just walking around and my back is soaked through my clothing my irritability level rises to a point where I can turn on anyone in a moments notice. I keep a smile on my face because after all this was my idea and I had to keep telling Steven who hates heat that everything will be fine and it will not be that bad. I can see on his face he almost has this gloating look of I told you so but because of my pride I was not about to let him see that he was right. I just said man I am sweating my butt off and it is hot and we all agreed.


We cross the street to check out this "lake". The beach area as stated was very small but the kicker was the lake. In all honesty the lake or should I say pond looked like noone had used it for years. You know when you go into a swamp and you see all of that thick green algae sitting on top well that was this pond. I am not even close to exaggerating how disgusting it was. Thick sections of green algae and seaweed through the entire thing. It was the nastiest thing I had ever seen and these morons had advertised it as a beach to swim at. I believe now is the moment where I began to realize that the website had to have been staged or set up when the place first opened. We later came to the conclusion that the ever so happy families and children in the pictures had to be the owners own family because noone could say they were happy staying at this place the way we saw it...in fact noone was staying at this place while we were there. So we walked to the petting zoo which was about 3-4 goats, one baby bambi, a rabbit and probably the family dog all in this little make shift zoo. The next sign that we should have ran would be the fact that the animals seemed scared to death of humans...hmm could it be that this zoo had never been visited....I think so.

Heather & I are now upset and Christopher & Steven are trying to reassure us that everything will be fine...my how the tables have turned. We pull up to the area we are allowed to unload our trucks and being the hike down to our site. Talk about a pain in the butt. First we NEVER pack light for camping and second it is all down hill through a dirt/sand road...you ever tried rolling a heavy cooler through sand....well it is not easy and not fun. We get everything unloaded and Heather & I start laying out the tent. She & I had practiced putting up the tent at home and it took 20 minutes to get everything set up so we knew we had this in the bag.....wrong! I think the level of heat in the air seemed to mess with our sense of direction or the desire to follow directions but we put all of the poles in the wrong slots the first time. Not being our ever so cheerful selves at this point we yanked them out and put them in the right way. As we are mumbling not so nice things about this tent under our breath Christopher & Steven decide to start a fire so we can eat later. The website states we are allowed to use wood we find on site as long as we do not use an electrical device to remove said wood. Steven brought his hatchet and before I know it Christopher is hacking away at wood. He is 16 years old and responsible so no thought was given to it until I hear "oh crap I cut my leg." I remember thinking you have got to be kidding me as I flip around trying not to show the panic in my face thinking he hacked his leg off. I am laughing so hard I could cry right now because you just had to see the look on his face. He was trying so hard not to look worried but it was not working. I took a look at it and although he cut it pretty good it was not bad. We cleaned it out with water really good, soaked it with ice, put neosporin on it and a band aid and we were all good. We finished setting up the tent, literally and angrily threw everything inside and started working on dinner. Steven starts building fire and the girls head to the bathroom.

We hiked up the hill and were rather surprised to see how bright it was outside of the woods. We go to the bathrooms and reluctantly open the stall doors expecting the worst but were however pleasantly surprised that they were very clean. Now mind you we were comparing this to the last campground we stayed at so don't get excited thinking we were in the Ritz Carlton or something it was just tolerable. The showers were a little better then the other place as well but we figured that was because noone ever used them. The fact that we could actually use the bathroom without having a complete meltdown was exciting but overshadowed by the fact that the bathroom felt like a sauna. The air was stifling to say the least. We head back to our site which is now pitch black with our lanterns and fire lighting up our area. Steven had a hard time getting the fire going but finally managed to get it to stay lit so we could roast our hotdogs.

None of us are a big fan of hotdogs but after a long night of setting up it was the fastest thing I could think of to eat that first night. We have not had the best luck lately with Oscar Meyer hotdogs so I had a coupon, I know all you coupon ladies are cheering me on right now, for Ballpark hotdogs. I was so happy when my grocery store had them on sale for 88 cents considering they are typically 2.50 a pack so when I had a coupons for 1.50 off of three packs the deal was very worth it for me. We had never purchased them before and thought it might not cause so much yucky after effects that Oscar Meyers do to us. We started off roasting our hotdogs when princess diva as we sometimes call Heather drops the first one in the fire. I am already so irritated at this point that I could throw a hotdog at her but I calmly give her another one and go about my business. We all sit down to eat and then decide we want to take a shower to wash off all of the nasty sweat and to cool off to be able to sleep.


Heather & I go for a shower first while the guys stay at camp. I could not get the water cold enough to try and cool down my body it was that humid out. We shower and dry off and then dry off and dry off......you see the humidity was so bad in this shower house that no matter how many times I dried off I still felt wet. Well as many of you know when you are wet getting clothes on is next to impossible without jumping around like an idiot which is exactly what we did. Wiggle this, hop around on this foot, slam into the wall and yes we were dressed...sweating again but we were dressed. Nothing beats a shower and feeling clean but you have really not lived until you take a shower, feel all clean and walk to your site and feel like you never took one in the first place...you should try it sometime. Steven & Christopher head up to shower while we watch the site....I still have not figured out what we were watching the site for because there was noone around to steal anything but I guess it made us feel safe.


Now here is where those of you who know Heather & I know how much we love our scary movies. You can ask anyone who has watched them with me personally I have no problem watching a scary movie and going straight to bed...nothing really gets to me because after all it is just a movie. Now moving forward to sitting in the middle of the woods, cannot see anything around you and hearing all kinds of snapping or falling twigs it raises my awareness to a whole new level. I look at Heather and say "moments like this remind me of why we should not watch movies about cabins in the woods" to which she agreed. We kept hearing this cat like sound and quickly realized we had raccoons approaching our site due to the smell of our hotdogs we had just cooked. I started banging things around to make sure they were scared away. Freaked out was putting it mildly and we could not wait for the guys to come back. No offense to the men in our group but none of us seem very tough when it comes to this situation but for some reason knowing a man was around made me feel secure but I am not sure that had someone come after us I would have not been left behind while they all ran for their lives.


We were all kind of creeped out by the sounds of possible animals coming to kill us for our food so we decided to load everything into the tent and play a game. We played a game of uno, made sure the tent was closed up, put the gun and hatchet in a quick to get to place and decided to call it a night. I had a the brilliant idea of stacking to air mattress on each other to offer more support and at first it was rather brilliant until the lower mattress partially deflated and we were launched upwards like we were sleeping on the side of a hill. We all are having a hard time falling asleep due to the creepy sounds and the heat. I am just about to fall asleep when I hear "aunt Jenn" I pretend to ignore her request for my attention then I hear her moan and I say "what" to which she replies "I have to go to the bathroom". I think I could have reached over and killed her at this point because I was almost asleep and it was dark outside and I did not want to hike to the bathroom. I told her to just hold it to which she replied it is filling up, meaning her bladder, and she can't hold it anymore. I turn on the light and we are about to exit the tent when it happens. Steven jolts up out of a dead sleep and starting freaking out. Now to spare my hubby the embarrassment I will not go into details of this said freak out but lets just say we all kind of sat there for a moment just looking at him like what in the world is going on. I am still not convinced he was fully awake but either way he was not feeling well. My husband can get severe anxiety in stressful situations and I would say that this had been one of those situations. He kept saying I am freezing but sweating to death which I knew meant he had a fever but to spare us the drama I said oh no you feel fine. I gave him a rag soaked in cold water and made him lay down. His back was soaked with sweat but his body was freezing. I was not about to haul everything out of there that night so I layed him down and told him to relax while Heather & I hiked to the bathrooms.


Heather goes to the bathroom for what seemed like an eternity...I guess she was not kidding when she said it was filling up. We hike back to our sites one of us pointing a flashlight to one side and the other to another to make sure nothing is wait to jump on us. We run back in the tent and lock it back up. Steven is still not feeling well and just about that time Christopher who has been asleep this entire time sits straight up and says "I think it was the hotdogs cuz I feel like I am going to be sick". I give him some pepto and he lays back down. Steven is now calm and we all lay down while he fumbles around the tent and as he decides to take some pepto himself. He takes a sip and the next thing I hear is oh no and then he spews in a bag that I had so nicely given him in case he got sick not knowing there was a hole in the bottom of the thing. He realized as he is puking that there is a hole so he tries to hold the next round in and get the tent open. This stupid tent has four zippers to get open in order to get out and he can't get it fast enough and he spews all over the wall of the tent. We later discovered that Heather saw him struggling to get out of the tent but decided that her rest was more important then helping her sick Uncle. I lay there and am saying to myself why in the world is this happening right now. The smell is unreal so I get up and start cleaning up all of the puke on the bottom of the tent and walls. Steven finally gets it open and his head is out of the tent and his butt is inside while he is puking again. He has now been kneeling in his own vomit and has it all over his arms. I am trying to be a loving wife not showing my complete irritation at this point and I start cleaning everything up. He keeps apologizing and I keep telling him it is okay he did not know this would happen. I was very proud of myself for maintain my composure and controlling my gag reflex as I cleaned up this mess. I can say that hotdogs are out for this family for a long time if not forever after what I saw and onions might be a close second. After everything is cleaned up including Steven it is now well past 2 in the morning and we get back in the tent to go to sleep.


We all finally doze off but not without waking hourly throughout the night. We slept until about 8 the next morning.....and yes this was all the first day.



Day 2: Friday


The Plan: NONE


The Story: We had originally planned to camp for three nights this year but after the night we just experienced and the realization that we have absolutely nothing to do at this place we narrowed it down to one night.

Steven started the fire again to make breakfast. Heather & I ran up and took our showers while they got the fire going and again spent a good portion of time jumping around to get our clothes on. We head back down and the fire is nearly ready to start cooking. For some reason this girl seems to think she needs to be Ms. Betty Crocker on camping trips and plans these way too extravagant meals that require alot of prep work and cook time. I had planned a breakfast skillet that required three...yes three pans to cook everything in and then it is all put together. The potatoes and peppers took forever to cook as did the bacon. I believe this skillet takes me roughly 25-30 minutes to start and be ready to serve at home but this took well over an hour to get to our plates. Heather was so hungry she decided to start eating smores for breakfast considering we were going to miss out on it after today and thought she would cram her whole camping weekend into one hour. Once breakfast was finished we started tearing down everything. I was again sweating at this point and not happy about it. Okay so everything is packed back up and now we have to haul this stuff five minutes up a hill to the truck. Oh yeah and while we were packing up the host of the campgrounds decided to pay us a visit to get me to sign off that my life was in my own hands while on her property and give us our change from the money I left for her. I told her we would not be staying due to the heat and my husband being sick to which she replied "that is one thing about camping there is no air conditioning"....I seemed to sense a hint of sarcasm in her voice but blew it off thinking that it was just the heat messing with my word processing skills. She then informed me that they do not give refunds but would gladly credit my account for a future visit. I think my look of do you really think I will be back and the dead silence got my point across and she so kindly climbed back into her little golf cart and drove away. I did not mind walking away from $20 bucks and honestly she could not have offered me enough to relive another night like last night so keep it and go clean your pond lady is what I was thinking.

So we haul everything up the hill and start loading the truck. Once everything is hauled back up Steven & Christopher head off for a shower while Heather & I enjoy some water and rest. We were now getting hungry for lunch so we decided to hit Chikfila in South Bend and then on to Shipshewana to see if we can find a hotel out that way to stay in for the night. We ate and then we drove for about an hour and arrive at the waterpark hotel they have there. After finding out that it would be $224 bucks to stay for the night we decided that was too much to pay and proceeded to check into other places. You know this Amish little town are highway robbers let me tell you. Every hotel was outrageous there. We went to a little place that sells homemade pretzels grabbed one for the road and settled on Elkart Indiana at the Jameson Inn. Steven & I stayed there one weekend for a short getaway and it was very nice and very affordable plus they had a pool.

We arrive at our hotel and all know that in order to go into the hotel we have to unpack all of this crap just to get to our clothing. We have been in the car for around three hours at this point, had barely slept the night before and now we had to unpack everything again and it was hot. Heather opens the hatch and stuff starts falling out which instantly puts me in a bad mood. The latern bottom fell out and batteries are rolling all over the parking lot. We get them put back together and start pulling everything out. Steven can see that I am getting really angry at this point because I am throwing things over my head not caring where they land so he kindly steps in and tells me to go inside and let him handle it....love his patience when I am at my breaking point. We haul out the suitcase with our clothing, our shower bag, and the coolers with food so they do not spoil. We drag it to our hotel, turn the ac to 65 degrees because we were burning up, shred our clothes and put on bathing suit and jump straight into the pool. Water has never felt so good as it did in that moment. It completely calmed my nerves and relieved the stress of the last 24 hours and made it to where we could finally laugh at what we had been through.

After the pool we order a pizza, watched a movie on tv and we went to bed. I must have been exhausted because I do not recall waking up at all in the night and then Christopher informed me that I was breathing so hard, like an air matress being deflated in his words, that he could not sleep.

Day 3: Saturday

The Story: As you can see there were no plans after the first night we were just so stressed that we decided what we were doing at the last minute. Today we decided to go home early. We had someone watching the animals until Sunday but we all just wanted to be home. We checked out at 10am and were home by noon. Yes if you were paying attention we did not make it an entire 48 hours on this trip and yes all of the above happened in that short amount of time.

Conclusion: I believe we have all agreed that we are not campers. We tried so hard to convince ourselves that we can do anything no matter how hard we are tough enough to do it. Lets face it folks we are not. Don't get me wrong when the place and weather is right camping is alot of fun but it requires alot of planning and work. My problem is I think and plan it out too much. I seem to think feeding my family donuts and milk for breakfast is mean and that I need to make them bacon and eggs...spoiled brats! I also seem to think that we need to bring our entire house into the woods. Literally the only thing not in the woods was our pets, appliances and our beds other then that we were good to go. I am a planner by nature and I make lists...yes I am one of those people. When plans go aray I do not handle it well but I am learning to adapt.

Steven believes he is Fire Marshall Bill (only Chris will get this) and can whip up a fire in no time flat in order to cook a full course meal. He & I do not think on the same level when it comes to planning. He has his pace and trust me mine is totally different.

Christopher is the calm one who seems to stare at all of us in disbelief when things start going down hill. I know he will never admit it but even though we are a bunch of nuts he loves hanging out with us. He also has an answer to everything which at times will drive you crazy. For instance when you see the green pond and realize that we can't swim in it he comes up with something from Discovery that he saw about how the green algae can been good for your skin or something crazy along those lines. Oh and just to be clear because he will correct me when he reads this he did not say that about it being good for your skin I am giving you an example because honestly when I was so hot I did not care what Discovery or Mother Nature had to say about algae all it meant to me is no relief from this horrible weather. He is really good and remembering exactly what he said so I want to clarify this for his own peace of mind.

Heather seems to have a faith in us when it comes to anything. You love it and hate it at times. She also seems to think she is not a little princess when it comes to dirt but I hate to break it to her she is very wrong. She cannot handle bugs, dirt, hard labor, or sweating so why she wants to go camping all the time amazes me. I give her credit for wanting to try something different.

As for all of us we need to just realize that camping is not for us. I am sure we will go again, in fact we had to switch our deposit on the first place to October in order not to lose that deposit, but we have changed the criteria for going. New rules are as follows:

1. If it sounds to good to be true....it is.
2. If we or noone we know has not been to this place we will not go
3. If the weather is going to be over 80-83 we will not go
4. We will eat food that is easily prepared or out of a box and love it. :)
5. We will always have a backup plan

This trip was not fun in the least bit. We now can sit back and laugh about it but had anyone laughed during that moment they probably would not be alive. At least we are making memories, may not be very fun but at least we are making them.