Caseville

June 30th through July 8th, 2007

Saturday, June 30th - 80/60°, Mostly Sunny

    Since today was the day we needed to drive both trailers to Caseville from home, we got an early start at home. We finished loading the last few items while Tara and Jayden went to a meeting and ran a few last minute errands. I was working on mowing the lawn when they returned. By this time Dad & Mom were on their way to Caseville with their camper. We had a quick lunch of Little Caesars pizza and breadsticks (most of our food was in the camper and we didn’t want to cook).

    After lunch we continued to get ready and clean ourselves up. Around 5:00pm Dad & Mom returned with the truck. We got our camper hooked up and pulled out around 5:30pm. After a quick stop in Davison for dinner (everyone’s favorite, McDonalds) we were back on the road.

    We made it to Caseville around 8:30pm. After checking in at the campground, we proceeded to site #30 to set up camp. After we finished getting the major jobs done we headed to the beach sometime around 10:00pm to watch the Caseville fireworks display. Mom stayed behind with Jayden, who had fallen asleep. After the show was over, we wandered back to campsite and headed for bed, with our heads hitting the pillows around 11:30pm.

Sunday, July 1st - 70/50°, Mostly Sunny

    Jayden is apparently not a big fan of sleeping in the trailer, as she woke up in the middle of the night screaming, and was also up around 8:00am, neither of which is in her normal routine. Once she wakes up screaming, everyone else pretty much wakes up too. We decided to eat breakfast, which for today consisted of chocolate-chocolate chip muffins for the kids and cinnamon rolls for the adults.

    After we ate and got dressed, we hung around outside for a while. It was pretty cool and windy today, so normal attire was jeans and sweatshirts. The kids rode bikes and scooters, while we stayed at the campsite and took care of things that needed tending. Somewhere along the way today, Samantha managed to wipe out twice – once we saw because it was near our campsite and one we missed because she was a ways away. Luckily for her, both times there were nice enough people around to help her back onto her feet (and return the bike to our campsite while walking her back, in the second crash). Around noon we had lunch, which consisted of either sub sandwiches or peanut butter & jelly, along with chips.

    After lunch we went to Port Hope to see a car show (via Port Austin, which is where Mom thought the show was). We arrived too late for the actual car show, but we did catch the end of the Port Hope parade as it made its way along a back road. After the last thing went by us we decided to go wandering around town (what little there was of it). While inside an antique store we did hear a little bit of history regarding a rather nice, large house (which I had previously taken a couple of pictures of). Apparently the man who owned the house owned several ships. He would watch for them from the top level of the house, and upon their arrival he would summon his workers to go take care of them. The house is now known as the Stanford House, which was his last name.

    After leaving Port Hope, we made a short stop at the Grindstone City General Store (which isn’t really much of a store anymore, now it is an ice cream shop) for ice cream cones. After our return to the campground, we decided to have hot dogs (cooked over the fire, which is a first for us while camping I believe, and may be the last, as I thought that the outside of the dogs were fine but the inside stayed a little cool for my liking) and macaroni-n-cheese for dinner.

    After dinner Dad, Tyler, and I walked to the beach to try and get some sunset pictures. I didn’t get any good ones though, as I think I was too late for the sunset. The sky was still plenty orange, but there were just enough clouds that I couldn’t really tell when I should get there. I didn’t want to walk to the beach and wait for a half hour or more! After my failed attempt at pictures, we spent a little more time around the campfire before finally turning in around 11:00pm.

Monday, July 2nd - 72/53°, Sunny

    I sense a pattern developing with Jay’s sleep pattern. Once again she woke up in the middle on the night. She was up for good around 8:30am today, and everyone else soon followed (and proceeded to pile into Tara & my little bed (little is a relative term – it is little when there are six people in it!). We ate breakfast inside once again, sticking to our combination of muffins and cinnamon rolls.

    We didn’t leave the park today. Dad did manage to get the three older kids to the playgrounds for a while. They started out at the playground near the beach (which is also nearest to our campsite), but Tyler convinced everyone to try out the other one (which is near the front of the park, but it isn’t an unmanageable walk by any stretch of the imagination). By the time they returned, it was lunchtime. Once again we had subs and PB&J. The only difference was that Dad, Mom, and Tara started out with a salad.

    Our post lunch activities were more of the same. Bike rides and scooter rides for the kids, hanging around the campsite, and that kind of thing. Tyler did manage to meet up with a couple of kids while out riding bikes, but that just gave him some extra courage. He decided to ride down this fairly short but steep hill at the front of the park. On his way down he hit a spot of sand, which of course isn’t a good thing on a bike. He proceeded to crash into a pole (and just missed a few trees). He didn’t cry too much until we got back to the campsite (you know the rule with boys – never let your friends see you cry). I think he was fine, just a bruised ego out of the whole incident.

    We started our dinner early tonight with the hope that we could eat before Tara had to go (she met up with a friend of ours to attend a meeting together). Of course nothing was ready for her in time, but we did try. While dinner was cooking, Erica, Donovan, and Marissa arrived, sometime around 5:30pm. They had made it just in time for a dinner of steak and baked potatoes. Although the baked potatoes weren’t my favorite (and have never really been), the steak worked out really well on the campfire using the old oven racks that Tara had brought home a couple of years ago (and that we never really used until today).

    Tara returned from her meeting around 7:30pm, at which time I finished cooking her steak and she reheated her potato so that she could finally eat her dinner. While she finished I attempted to take all of the kids to the park (with the exception of Jayden), but one by one they all gave up on the walk until I was by myself. I guess Donovan needed a sweatshirt, but it was taking an awful long time and an awful amount of kids to get one. I ended up wandering around the loop on our side of the campground before returning to our site. Upon my return I was greeted by being yelled at for not taking the kids. I tried. It wasn’t like they hadn’t been asking to do something for the past hour and 30 minutes… I guess that just wasn’t enough time to be prepared to leave.

    I headed inside up being yelled at so that I could start this diary before I completely forgot everything that we did already, so I am not sure if the kids ever made it to the park or not (and if not, I guess they deserved not to go). Tara sent Tyler to bed early because he was being so whiney, and it was just Jayden’s bedtime. Tara headed there herself, since she hasn’t been sleeping well either (getting up with Jayden hasn’t helped either of us out). I headed back outside for a short while to watch Drew and Sam, although she spent most of the last part of the night inside Dad & Mom’s camper. Finally, around 10:00pm tonight, we all headed to bed with hopes of a happier tomorrow…

Tuesday, July 3rd - 75/63°, Mostly Sunny

    We got to sleep in a little today – making it to almost 9:00am before being woken up by the kids. Another day of the same old same old for breakfast, although Samantha and Drew did have a bowl of cereal. After we finished eating and getting dressed, it was time to head outside. Most of our time this morning was spent just relaxing, while the kids were gung-ho to ride bikes and go, go, go. I did break out the tools to take Donovan’s training wheels off of his bike, and wasn’t really too happy about it. He had apparently been doing it last year but wouldn’t try again. Erica managed to get him on the bike, and rode up and down the road a little. Dad managed to get him on and had him riding alone in no time at all.

    We squeezed in another lunch of sandwiches today, and hopefully it will be the last for this trip. I get enough sandwiches at work! After we cleaned up the tables, everyone headed to the beach, with the exception of Mom, who stayed behind to watch Jayden while she took a nap. The kids had a good time in the water, even though the wind made it a little cool. Tyler, Sam, Donovan, and Marissa all took off and were playing around near the shore and wading out for a ways. Drew, on the other hand, wouldn’t go out without holding his Grandpa’s hand. After the kids got pretty cold, we decided that we better head back to the campsite.

    Tara, the kids, and I were meeting up with our friends Jeff & Becky at her parents cottage for dinner with their family. We took some time cleaning up, and then made the short drive to visit. The kids got to play with lots of toys that would probably be deemed illegal nowadays, but for us and our parents they were commonplace (such as real metal garden rakes). We had hot dogs and hamburgers for dinner, and my kids actually seemed to eat a good meal tonight. After the game the kids continued to play, mostly inside now but outside a little too. Tara took advantage of the real bathroom to give both Drew and Jayden a bath, while Jeff and I spent a little time watching the Tigers game on TV (and I found out later that they blew it in the 10th inning). I must give a special thank you to Gary & Mary, Becky’s parents, for the use of their bathtub and wash machine, which we also used to do a load of beach towels and bathing suits. Once it started to become abundantly clear that it was time to start putting kids to bed, we loaded up and headed home.

    Dad & Mom were still out by the campfire, so we put Drew and Jayden into bed and headed back outside to roast marshmallows with Tyler and Sam, since we had been promising them for a couple of days that we would do it. I am not sure if we were too loud or they were just up anyway, but Erica, Donovan, and Marissa also came out to join us for a while. Once everyone had their fill of chocolate, graham crackers, and marshmallows we headed in to go to bed for the night, sometime around 11:00pm.

Wednesday, July 4th - 80/70°, Mostly Sunny

    Last night was a rough one. Between the rain, which I heard for the first time around 3:00am, and Jayden, who was up several times throughout the night, neither Tara nor I managed to get much sleep. The original plan was to have a big breakfast outside this morning with everyone at once today (as opposed to our separate breakfasts), but the fact that it was still raining heavily when we finally crawled out of bed around 8:45am put an end to that. We still had pancakes, sausage, and bacon, but we had to eat inside though.

    Today, being Independence Day, there was a parade in Port Austin which we intended to watch, so we didn’t really get much done around the campground this morning. The kids were allowed to play the Playstation for a short while, but then it was time to go… We met up with Jeff & Becky, as well as their kids and her parents, to watch the parade. I don’t know what the kids enjoy more: collecting the candy or watching the parade (no wait, actually I do, and the winner takes it by a landslide). After the parade was over, we headed back to the campground with the intention that everyone who needed one (which was pretty much everyone) could get a nap.

    Of course once we returned to the campground almost no one actually took a nap, with the exception of Jayden, Marissa, and Erica. Tara started to inflate the chairs that we used for tubing a couple of years back with the intention of taking the kids back to the beach. The only problem was that the pump in the van was nowhere near powerful enough to get them fully inflated. By the time she was able to get them close to usable, it was too late to take the kids to the beach.

    Tonight was taco night, and we had a fairly early start at cooking today. Tacos aren’t really campfire friendly, so we had no worries about that problem. Ever since the rain passed through we have had a bit of a problem getting fires started. Around 8:00pm, once all of our dishes had been put away and all of us were cleaned up, we loaded up the vehicles and headed back to Port Austin.

    We actually beat Jeff & Becky and their family to our appointed meeting time and place, so we weren’t 100% where to set up our chairs for optimal fireworks viewing. Basically we followed the crowd towards the break wall until we found a large open area that we thought was in line with the launch site. As it happened, we weren’t too far off on our guess, and the rest of our group had little difficulty finding us. Arriving at 8:30 gave us plenty of downtime before the show actually began, and occupying the kids was challenging at times, but I give them a ton of credit for remaining fairly well behaved. I must give pretty low marks to the actual fireworks show, however. Although the fireworks that they did have were pretty, the overall length of the show was much shorter than we had anticipated and the finale was a little disappointing as well. In all honesty, I don’t think that most people believed that it was actually over with when it was ended. The vast majority of the crowd waited around for several minutes before getting up to go. Of course the crowd was much tougher to navigate our way out of when compared to the fireworks in Caseville, where all we had to do was walk back to the campers. Tonight we had to walk a couple of blocks to the cars, and then make our way through a lot of traffic before completing the 17 mile trek back to Caseville. By the time we had done that, it was 11:30pm and time to head to bed.

Thursday, July 5th - 80/65°, Mostly Sunny

    We finally got smart and put Jayden to sleep by herself in the bunkhouse, Drew got the dinette, and Tyler and Samantha got the sofa. This way when Jay woke up not everyone had to hear her scream, and we got to sleep in a little later – today it was around 9:00am before we piled out of bed. Yesterday was supposed to be big breakfast day, but that got rained out so we tried again today. Everything started out fine when we were cooking, but before we got done it had started to rain. We quickly moved a picnic table under our awning and had breakfast underneath. Aside from the table being a little uneven, it wasn’t a bad way of having breakfast. By the time we finished eating, the rain had pretty much stopped. During this time we went ahead and got dishes cleaned up, and took care of cleaning ourselves as well.

    Since we had a late breakfast, we decided to skip lunch. The kids wanted to head to the beach, since it had warmed up when the sun came out. Everyone went, with the exception of Dad & Mom, who stayed behind to watch Jayden while she napped. The kids really like this beach because they can go a long ways out and still stand without fear of water going over their heads. While we were there, Becky called to say she was on her way with Thomas and her sister, Liz. They met up with us shortly afterward. After a while of sitting on the beach in my comfy chair I decided to see how far out I could actually walk. Erica went with me, and I would say that we made it out at least 200 feet before the water started to get more than a few inches above my waist. At that point it started to deepen, and that was the water that got cold, and also where I stopped! Along the way out there were places where the water was waist deep and then a few steps farther only ankle deep. This is a great beach for football or Frisbee, as it is also rock free. A little later Tara, Erica, and all of the kids joined me for another walk out. Besides a couple of places where the kids wanted to have their hands held (and Marissa wanted to be carried) everyone made it out as far as we dared before getting too cold. By this time the kids were shivering anyway, and we had begun to hear thunder rumbling more frequently in the distance, so we decided to head back. We said goodbye to Becky, Liz, and Thomas before making the short trek back to the camper.

    When we got back Dad & Mom had the turkey cooking in the garbage can. I know, it sounds strange, but it is a good way to cook a turkey that we learned last year when we stayed up this way at Oak Beach. Of course, the thunder we were hearing moved in closer than we were hoping, and rained us out of eating outside. We ended up cooking potatoes on the grill under the awning, but the wind was blowing the rain too much to eat there again. We took the kids picnic table into Dad & Moms fifth-wheel and everyone ate there. It figures that by the time we actually sat down to eat that the rain had pretty much passed, except for the occasional sprinkle we could have stayed under the awning without having to worry about the kids messing up the camper floor. Oh well, such is my luck.

    After dinner was done and put away, we decided that it was a good time to take a walk across M-25 to visit the local Dairy Queen. Donovan had his vanilla ice cream cone while Marissa branched out to vanilla/chocolate mix in her cone and Erica had a sundae. Tara had a vanilla/orange cream bar, Sam also had a vanilla cone, and Tyler had a hot fudge sundae, despite repeated claims that he really wanted a banana sundae. Drew had my Uncle Ray’s favorite, a banana shake, while I went for my DQ favorite cookie-dough Blizzard. After we all had our treats, we walked back to the campers.

    Since it had rained earlier, the roads were plenty muddy (most of the roads to the campsites are basically sand) we decided that the kids should probably head inside (it was already nearing 9:00pm and they were relatively clean). We put Jayden down for the night while Tyler and Sam played on the Playstation. Drew came up into our bed to lay with us while Tara did some reading and I attempted to get my computer to work (power cord trouble) without much success. By the time the news started we had the kids turn off their game and Drew climbed into his bed so that we could call it a night once more.

Friday, July 6th - 78/65°, Mostly Sunny

    Another day of sleeping in! We got ourselves up at 9:45am today, although Tara said she gave Jayden a bottle around 7:00am (I never heard her make a peep, however). Since we were so late getting up today, breakfast was pretty much forgotten about, except Tara and I did manage to get a bagel eaten without too much hassle from the kids.

    I had previously decided and announced that today’s lunch would be the pizzas in the pie irons, and that is what we managed to do – totally rain free. Everyone got at least one pizza, and most everyone ate more than that. The only problem we have when cooking pizzas for so many people is that it takes a long time to make and cook all of those little pizzas.

    Once lunch was finished and everyone overate, the kids went to the beach again, only this time Erica went along with my Dad & Mom while Tara & I stayed behind with Jayden (who was already sleeping) and Drew (who was going to take a nap). I took Drew for a short walk while everyone got ready to go, so that he wouldn’t throw a fit because he couldn’t go. We went to the playground, where he went down the slides several times. I finally convinced him to head back to the camper, only to trick him into taking a nap with me. The kids were at the beach playing and having a good time, and Tyler even saw a kid from school, Cason. While they were going I managed to get my computer working long enough to work on the diary and get vacation pictures organized.

    When they returned covered in sand, Jay was just waking up from her nap, followed very closely by Drew from his. We gave all of the kids an outdoor shower behind Dad & Mom’s camper so that they would be relatively clean before we headed out to dinner at Lefty’s on Becky’s Dad’s recommendation. We pulled into the restaurant at 6:00pm and made our way inside. Lefty’s is a pretty small restaurant, which is probably fine for a small town like Caseville on a normal night, but I imagine on holiday weekends (like this one, surrounding the fourth of July) things get a little hectic. That was definitely the case this particular Friday night, because we stood waiting to be seated for about five minutes without so much as anyone who worked their actually talking to us. We saw that several large parties had been seated just before we got there and decided that it would take too long for us to wait. Instead we opted to make the drive to our favorite up-north fish joint, the world’s famous Williams Inn in Harbor Beach. On our way over to the restaurant, we passed through the town of Harbor Beach, which we had not done for quite some time, and I recognized a few places, such as Randolph’s, which is a restaurant that we ate at many years ago when I was a little kid with my Grandparents, Albert & Edna.

    As usual our dinner was good, and we all chose to have the buffet with the all-you-can-eat perch on it, as well as a couple of other kinds of fish (which none of us really care about). Except for having to wait for fresh perch to come out to the buffet a couple of times, and slow service on the drink refills, it was a truly enjoyable meal, as always. After the completion of our meal we decided to continue our drive south a little further to the campground where we are staying on our next trip, Lake Huron Campground in Forrester. Being a brand new campground in its first year of existence, there isn’t a lot of tree cover, but there is lots of place for the kids to ride bike and a nice large playground area for them to enjoy themselves at.

    Once we finished eating, we made the long drive home (it was long when you sat on the floor behind the last row of seats in the van, anyway). Things went smoothly until a) we got caught by a train that stopped on the tracks in Pigeon, and b) Mom, who was driving, hit a raccoon on our last bit of road into Caseville. After that, we made it to the campground unscathed, where we headed straight to bed, as it quickly approached 11:30pm.

Saturday, July 7th - 85/68°, Mostly Sunny

    Check out day #1. Well, this was supposed to be our check out day, anyway. With the troubles that come with hauling two trailers in one day with one truck, we decided to stick around one more day. Dad & Mom proceeded with the original schedule of leaving today, so that only one trip was required per day (although one of them has to come back up tomorrow, which somehow doesn’t seem fair to them, but that is how it is working out). Most of the morning was spent reorganizing our collection of stuff, getting our appropriate items back to the respective trailers, as well as in helping them get their stuff put away.

    Before they left we had one last lunch together, finishing up the lunch meat that was left over (and that was still good) and whatever chips that were left over as well. When they hooked up the camper and pulled out we loaded up the van as well, to get on the road to Bayport to pick up some perch and whitefish (for Dad & Mom). It seems to be a yearly thing that we either buy perch here or in St. Ignace when we do the bridge walk, or both times, depending on our appetite for fish throughout the year.

    When we made it back to the campground we already had new neighbors, who were in the process of setting up their trailer. It seems to be a situation like what we were in over the last few years: Grandpa & Grandma have the camper, Dad, Mom, & the kid(s) come with them. We chatted for a while, as their Grandson is two years old and is very reminiscent of Drew (except for the hair color).

    The kids were itching to go to the beach for most of the day, but we convinced them to wait until after we ate an early dinner, mainly to ease the sunshine coming down on our already slightly over tanned bodies. Since the kids had the itch to get moving, we started making our “hobo dinners” (hamburgers, potatoes, and carrots wrapped in aluminum foil) around 4:00pm. When we had sat down to eat, a lady from the row of campers across from us walked by and told us about a news report of a little boy in the hospital because of e-coli at the beach, and we decided that we didn’t want to risk it on our last night in town – even though the beach wasn’t closed and there must have been hundreds of people there enjoying themselves.

    Instead of the beach we convinced the kids to head to the playground instead. We took a bike ride to the front of the park, and the kids started out enjoying themselves on the playscape before heading over to the merry-go-round. I took my turn spinning the kids (ours and several others as well) until Samantha bumped her head and Tyler started to feel a little sick to his stomach. Drew even took a couple of turns (although at a slower pace than the bigger kids), and when he got off he was a little dizzy, as you could tell from his walk.

    By the time the kids had had enough, we rode back to the campsite. We got Drew and Jayden cleaned up and put to bed, and the rest of us headed outside to make s’mores. We spent some time by the fire roasting marshmallows, talking, and enjoying each others company. By the time the kids started getting tired, we decided that it was time to head inside. We put the last two kids down for the night, and then turned in ourselves one last time this trip.

Sunday, July 8th - 95/75°, Sunny

    Check out day #2. Today is officially our real check out day. We managed to sleep in a while once more, as putting Jayden in the bunkhouse has really seemed to help her sleep, and us too! Once we got up, we proceeded to get things put away so that we could begin the drive home. I sorted through pretty much all of the underneath storage areas, reorganizing and storing the things that we have used over the past week. I did manage to take the kids on one last bike ride before packing the bikes inside the camper. Once Dad & Mom returned with the truck to take us home, we finalized the trailer, hooked up, and pulled out. We made the drive home, stopping at McDonalds in Caro on our way for lunch. Once we returned home, we got the trailer parked in its home beside the house once again. We unloaded the bare minimum items that were needed inside (it was much too hot outside to unload everything) before officially wrapping up this camping trip.

Trip Summary

    Well, all in all it really wasn’t a bad trip. I think that we had concerns about spending a week without full hookups, but things went pretty smoothly despite us having only water and electric. We utilized a slow trickle on the shower water overnight, which allowed us to avoid having to use the pay showers in the bath houses ($0.25 for 4 minutes). Since the ground was so sandy, the water pretty much disappeared as soon as it hit the ground.

    Our sites were pretty decent. Aside from site #32 being a corner lot adjacent to the public road into the beach parking lot, I really didn’t have any complaints. In reality, the road didn’t really bother me too much either, as we could sit and watch the cars come in and out, and aside from the occasional thumping radio or loud motorcycle I didn’t mind it. The site sizes are actually fairly decent, as we could easily park more than one car on it and still have plenty of room left over for the picnic area and the fire pit. In fact, many sites had a boat parked along with the trailer and a vehicle. Our particular sites had large sandy areas in front of them, which the kids deemed their sandboxes, which was a nice way for us to keep them occupied while we worked on dinners and stuff like that. We also had a large tree on our site, #30, that provided plenty of early morning and afternoon shade – so much shade that I didn’t even bother with the awning for the first 3 or 4 days.

    My primary complaint about the campground relates more to the reservation process than anything that was actually there. The whole process of first come/first served reservations where you are unsure of what type of site you are going to get is a big hassle. We thought that we were getting full hookups right up until a few weeks before we left (the campground map doesn’t show which sites have what). We also heard from some other campers who were supposed to have different sites, but when they arrived their assigned sites were taken already and they were forced to take a different one.

    Another thing that I thought was strange was the campfire situation. You aren’t allowed campfires directly on the ground, which I certainly understand, but there were no campfire rings on each site. Instead you were forced to either bring your own or rent one, at a cost of $1 per day. I suppose that if they just increased rates by $1 each day and provided rings for free that it would have cost us more overall (since we had two sites and only used one fire pit), but it sure seems like a more normal way of doing things, and it saves the hassle of having to go to the office to sign up for a fire pit to be delivered. I suppose that, looking back on it, it wasn’t really too bad. With the campfire ring that we had (which wasn’t actually a ring, but rather a small barrel cut in half with legs on it) we were at least able to move it to various locations on the site.

    My final complaint isn’t the fault of the campground, but rather the city of Caseville. The water was incredibly rusty – and this has apparently been a problem for the past several months all over town. We couldn’t rinse off food (in this case, grapes) without the water leaving a funny taste on it.

    As I stated, things weren’t as bad as we thought that they would be going into the week. We made it to a couple of parades, saw a couple of fireworks shows, and spent some time with some friends that we don’t get to see as much as we should considering how close we live to each other. Add in the beach and playgrounds and we kept ourselves pretty busy this week, and we had a good time doing it.