Port Sanilac, Michigan

Lake Huron Campground

August 7th through August 8th, 2009

August 7th, 2009 73/52°, Partly Cloudy

    Samantha, Tyler, Tara, and I left the house around 4:30pm today to meet Jayden, Drew, Mom, and Dad at the campground (they had left earlier in the day to get the camper set up). We made a quick stop in Flint to gas up the van, ran into a slow drive through the construction zone along I-69, and stopped in Imlay City for dinner at McDonalds. Tara and I both tried the new Angus burgers, and were generally impressed with the burgers, but both of ours were way too salty. We are willing to try them again (at another restaurant, though) to see if that changes. The French fries were also incredibly salty, so we are thinking it may just be that particular store.

    We arrived at the campground at 6:45pm, and Dad & Mom promptly left for an evening out with friends in from out of town for the Deckerville Homecoming activities that were to occur this weekend. Tyler quickly made a bee-line for the basketball court, which is his new favorite place to hang out. Those of us who were left in the camper decided to go for a walk around the campground to check out the lake and trails. While we were gone, Tyler hurt his ankle and he hobbled back to camper – of course we weren’t there, and we had neglected to tell him where we went (we never expected him to come back so soon – I guess we didn’t account for injury). When he found out that we weren’t there he panicked and went looking for us, even thought the camper was unlocked and he could have just sat and waited for us. Needless to say he was upset but relieved when we found him making his way back to the camper from the store at the front of the campground.

    The kids were really whiney tonight, so we decided against going into Deckerville for fireworks. We decided to spend the evening at home with the intention of getting to bed at a decent hour. To help ease the pain of not going to town tonight, we took all of the kids up to the campground store to get them ice cream cones. As you can imagine, this helped ease their pain at least a little.

    After eating our bedtime snack, we went back to the camper, where we watched Toy Story 2. Since it was already 10:30 by the time the movie was over, we chose to call it a night.

August 8th, 2009 70/61°, Heavy Rain

    We woke up around 8:30am this morning, to the sound of pouring rain. We made a call to some relatives in town only to find out that the parade was cancelled. When we were intending to go to the parade, we had planned to have a large breakfast to tide us over until later in the day. We decided to have the big breakfast anyway. We made pancakes and eggs, along with bacon.

    In the process of getting ourselves ready for the day I made an attempt to go out to the van to get a few items, only to find out that battery was completely run down We had left the plug-in cooler plugged in overnight, and this was obviously too much for the battery in the van. The battery was so dead that the remotes wouldn’t even unlock the doors. Thankfully, we were able to Use Dad’s jumper cables to get it going again. We let it run for 10-15 minutes, and it started up later when we went to go home (whew!).

    Since it was still raining out, we decided to just spend some time relaxing around the camper for a while. The kids passed the time by playing on the computer and with matchbox cars. By the time we were finally ready to get going home (Tara and I had plans for the evening), it was past lunch time. Since it was going to be a long time before we could feed the kids (and neither Tara nor I wanted fast food again), we decided to eat lunch before leaving. We made hot dogs for some of the kids, and most of the rest of us ate Spam. Dad and Tara ate sandwiches.

    We finally left for home a little before 3:00pm. We made a quick stop in Sandusky to buy blueberries. On our way through town we spotted my Grandma’s van, so we tried to chase her down to say goodbye. We followed her into the Wal-Mart parking lot only to find out that it wasn’t her! Turned out she was with her sister-in-law Janet, who had decided to run some errands and ended up using the van to do them in. We also stopped at a couple of Amish homes along the way to purchase some vegetables and some baked goods for a friend.

    We made it back home around 5:30pm. Tara and I got ready to go out again later tonight, while the kids took some time to unwind. After picking up the baby-sitter, it was time for Tara and I to head out for the night.

Trip Summary

    Although this was only intended to be a one night trip, it seemed like less than that thanks to the rain. We didn’t really get to do any of the things that we set out to do. This was our third trip out for the year, and the third time we were interrupted by the rain. Bah humbug! And to top it off, the kids didn’t seem to listen nearly as well on this trip as they did during our last weekend out. Highly disappointing.

    As usual, the campground was fine. We stayed on site 320, near the front of the park. The sites are still a little too wide open for my personal preference, but I think that will improve with age as the trees that have been planted mature somewhat. I am sure we will be back, however (hopefully in our own camper and with a truck of our own next time).