Adventures Outside the Village... Roadtrip!

With summer well under-way, (at least according to the calendar) we recently embarked on our annual week long camping trip 'Up North.' It's something everyone in our family always looks forward to, for various reasons.

My husband grew up in Greendale, so our children experience many of the things he did as a kid on a regular basis. I am originally from 'outside the bubble' however, so although I am a happy transplant, I really enjoy having the chance to take our kids to the area where I grew up.

Every June we load up the mini-van and make the six hour trek to Hayward to partake in a little family reunion. If you've ever packed four kids and two dogs plus all the gear you'll need for seven days of camping, you may be able to picture the scene in your head. 

Did I say we all look forward to the trip for various reasons? Well let me tell you, the car ride is not on any of our lists. These are kids who groan about how long it takes to get from Greendale to the Milwaukee County Zoo, or just about any time they see us turn onto a freeway on-ramp. Let's just say by the time we got to Madison, the youngest one had probably repeated a dozen times that famous line, "Are we there ---?" (yes, go ahead and finish it... I know if you are a parent you can do it)! 

After five more non-stop hours of listening to my daughters sing along to their Selena Gomez CD... we arrived. After another five hours, I think we may have finally gotten the lyrics to "Who Says?" out of our heads.

Anyway, we settled in to our campsite and I couldn't help but take note of how much has changed since the days I hung out there as a kid myself. Instead of sleeping in a tent on the hard ground, usually in a damp sleeping bag, we had an air-conditioned trailer. We still cooked out over a campfire, but we used metal roasting forks instead of finding branches and using a pocket knife to sharpen the ends.

I brought along my lap-top so I could keep up on what's happening in the world - thank goodness for WI-FI! They sure didn't have that back in the day. Of course, my computer screen seemed to attract a lot of insects, which gives a whole new meaning to the term, 'my computer has a bug.' I wonder if that pc repair plan I signed on for at the local electronics store will cover that?  

We got to see a lot of wildlife just like we do back home in Greendale, although this time it was a black bear instead of the stray fox that sometimes wanders through our back yard.

We took the kids and their cousins out on the lake in the new boat to go tubing, something we definitely can't pull off on a trip to Scout Lake. After some convincing, the kids even got me out on the tube- something I hadn't done since I was pretty close to being a kid myself. The next day I remembered why. Of course, I did score some 'cool aunt' points with the nieces and nephews for giving it a try, which in the end made the sore arms and back seem almost worth it.    

Before we knew it, the week was up and it was time for the trip back home. We gathered up all our things and with a round of hugs, said our good-byes and piled back into the mini-van. Even though it's great to go on vacation, the thought of sleeping in one's own bed again is always enough to make you think "there's no place like home."

Now if we could only just click our heels 3 times to get there, we could skip the return part of the road-trip!