Camping #8+9

For our EIGHTH camping trip, we invited another family to join us at Lochloosa River Retreat (aka "Camping Platinum"). The Alvey fam is a camping fam. My friend was telling me how much they loved their canvas Springbar tent and how it was worth every cent. The forecast called for thunderstorms that night...some of them could be severe. I had opted to camp in our car. The Alveys said they would be fine. 

I raised an eyebrow. 

Turns out, we did get rain that night. A ton of rain. Maybe 4-5 inches? It was ridiculous. The wind was crazy. At one point, the campground owners came out to check on everyone. My boys were already asleep, despite the thunder and pounding rain, so I said we'd stay in our car. 

The next morning we asked the Alveys how it went. She said they didn't get any water in their tent. None! And when the owner came out to check on them in the middle of the night, they couldn't hear him over the rain beating on their tent. 

Whoa.

We're not a camping family, but a tent that rugged and resilient would be a valuable asset in pretty much any outdoor situation. 

My boys played with the Alvey kids the whole time. They fished a little, explored the creek a little, and played some Capture the Flag in the woods. It was the first of these camping trips that I actually got to relax and enjoy myself a bit. The kids all swam in the pool for hours and hours. Saturday morning, our campground hosts dropped us off upstream with a pile of inner tubes. We floated down the river together for a couple hours. These were fancy inner tubes with backrests, netting on the bottom, and special clips on the sides to connect them together.

The kids swam some more while the adults broke camp. Lochloosa River Retreat is 3 hours away, but we love it. Audiobooks take the sting out of so much car time :) This trip, we listened to something from the Captain Underpants series and a couple books from the Last Kids On Earth series.

I took no pictures :(

A few days later, just as our mosquito bites from the last camping trip were calming down, we packed up again. 

Our NINTH trip was much more casual. I thought we could try a KOA for once. We stayed at the Casey KOA Journey just about an hour from home. We rented a teeny tiny cabin just big enough for a bunk bed and a full bed. We were on the edge of the campground, right next to a huge soybean field. 

We warmed up chicken strips over the fire, played pool and ping pong in the game room, and then swam until bedtime. There were big, official signs everywhere outlining rules and expectations: no dripping swimsuits in the buildings, game room open 9am-8pm, please don't ride bikes on the sidewalks, pool closes at dusk, no pets in the store. I saw a sign at the public restroom that read,  "Bathroom Closes Daily 12:30am." 

I thought, "Wow, these people really like their rules." 

I wondered if people were vandalizing the bathroom at night and that's why they got locked soon after midnight. 

"Still," I thought,  "Who closes the *only* public restroom at a campground?!"

Anyway, as we settled down for bedtime, our bodies suddenly remembered that we were sick with a summer cold. Congestion, coughing, headache, runny noses, sore throats,  fatigue...everything. We were miserable. After tossing and turning and aching and feeling my headache grow with my sinus pressure for what seemed like the whole night, I checked the clock: 12:30am. I still had the whole night ahead of me. I wanted to cry. Then I realized I needed to use the (now closed) bathroom, which forced me to make a very awkward decision.

Ugh.

Well, I successfully endured my throbbing head and teeth all the way until morning when I awoke and noticed the headache had left.

When I used the public restroom, I saw the 12:30 sign again. It actually read "Bathroom Cleaning Daily 12:30pm" Not closing...cleaning. Not the middle of the night...midday.

Ugh.

For breakfast, we cooked tube cinnamon rolls over the campfire and Matthew regaled us with his latest Ewok fantasy. 

We packed up and drove into Casey, IL, to check out all of their World Record Breaking giant things.

This is the back end of the world's largest functioning mail box. There's a blue wishing pond on the left of the bridge. Behind the boys, in the sky, is a tiny speck of a pigeon. There were some curious and uppity pigeons at the top of the mail box that made us laugh. 

World's Biggest Birdcage

Matthew pretending to get skewered by the world's biggest pitchfork (his idea, not mine)

We also saw the world's largest rocking chair, wind chime, golf tee, and knitting needles. There were other large things, but not all of them record holders. 

Our audiobooks for this trip were from the Stink Moody series and the Stick Dog series. Not exactly fine literature, but plenty entertaining.