June 9, 2024 - July 28, 2024 -- Thousand Trials Pine Country, IL to Wenatchee, WA to Frisco, CO to Lake Geneva, WI to Knox, IN to LaPorte, IN
Written By: Wendy
This next section was a whirlwind of summer travels. Like I said in our previous blog post, we were in our midwest summer tour of family and friends. We knew these 2 months would be a marathon, and we weren't wrong. It was so fun and amazing that we got to see and reconnect with so many people, but we learned that it is not a sustainable way for us to travel, especially with little kids. We would roll in to visit others for a few days or a week, and they would pack in all the things that they were excited to show us and do with us. We wanted to make the most of our short time together, so we would always say yes and try to do all the things. After we would leave, they would have time to recover and go back to "normal life." We would then go directly to the next set of friends or family we were visiting. This was an amazingly fun two months, but it dang near broke us. We learned a lot about what we need to do in the future if we want to make this lifestyle more sustainable. We learned that we needed to say no and that we needed to advocate for our own needs and our kids' needs. I am a social butterfly, I love seeing all the people and doing all the things, but I need 8 hours of sleep each night or else I dissolve into a puddle of tears. Scott needs downtime and alone time away from people and stimulation daily or else he short circuits. Parker is like me and loves all the people and stimulation, but he can get too amped up and aggressive if he doesn't have some calming times in his day. Caroline needs one-on-one connection time with her mama or else she turns into a clingy, whiny terror who shrieks and smacks anyone else who might try to talk to or look at her mom. We knew all these things were true, and yet we ignored them and tried to push on and make everyone else happy, and we were happy to do it! But, our needs eventually broke through when we could no longer stand each other in mid-July after over a month or ignoring what we needed and couldn't remember why in the world we thought it would be a good idea to travel together in a 33 foot RV anyway. All in all, it was a fun filled 2 months, but we learned a lot of important lessons and grew independently and as a family to figure out how to function together. I'll now breeze through our whirlwind of family and friend times. I'll mostly focus on the highlights, but for those of you that want to know the reality of travel and not just see the shiny happy pictures on social media, know that this was a time of extreme juxtaposition for us.
After we left St. Louis, we stopped for one night to visit my 93 year old grandma in Joliet, IL. This was the first time we had the cops called on us. We woke up at midnight to a banging on the door and an officer outside. Apparently some old neighborhood watch person got their thrill in by calling the police when they saw an RV parked in the back of the empty parking lot at the nursing home, which, by the way, we had permission to park in overnight. Exciting night for us all! From there, we headed to a Thousand Trails campground about an hour outside of the Chicago suburb area where I grew up. We saw some of my high school friends there and had another small 50 pies party for them one evening.
From there, we left our RV at a friend's house and flew to Wenatchee. Our insurance coverage is only in Washington state, so went to Wenatchee to crank out all our dentist and doctor appointments for the year in one week. We did it. We had 12 appointments and met up with 10 different families/friends within a week. Like I said before, we definitely ignored our needs this week, buuuut it was so fun!
From Wenatchee, we flew to Colorado to see Scott's family and have our annual summer vacation with the Ptolemy crew. It was a week filled with walks to the local coffee shop, afternoons spent chasing rubber duckies down the creek, a beautiful boat ride on Lake Dillion, and lots of cousin play time.
After Colorado, we flew back to Chicago to pick up the trailer and then headed directly to Lake Geneva, WI to spend two weeks at Camp SOAR. Camp SOAR is an overnight camp for kids with special needs that my mom started back in 2000. I have worked at the camp almost every summer since it started, but recently it has been several years since I'd been back due to COVID, kids, and living across the country. It was the 25th year anniversary this summer, though, so we had to go! The kids loved the two weeks we spent at camp, having all the social attention from 45 campers and 50+ teenage counselors and the constant rotation of pre-planned activities. Our highlight of both weeks was our 50 pies parties. There are two one-week sessions of camp, and on the day before campers come each week, there is training for all the teenage counselors. All these teenagers volunteer time out of their summer to spend a week or two at camp to help kids with moderate to severe disabilities. We wanted to give back to the counselors and thank them, and the best way we know to do that is by making pizza! For lunch during both of the training days, we made pizzas for all the counselors. We gave our kids to Nana to watch and recruited another pizza maker, and we were able to crank out 25 pizzas each week in under hour (in the past, it has taken us about 2.5 hours to make that many pizzas). Bam! Pizza restaurant here we come! The bottomless pits of stomachs that only teenagers have loved all the pizza, and we loved being able to spread the pizza love with them. Another highlight was when Scott and I suited up in our "Wonder Wind" and "Super Soar" costumes to tell the campers campfire stories and take them on a little hike. Parker and Caroline didn't know what to think when we came running out with superhero costumes on, calling ourselves by other names. Parker, who still at age 5, does not know that lies exist (don't you DARE think about teaching him otherwise!) believed that we truly were superheroes, and we just hadn't told him yet until this moment. Just imagine his wide eyes, staring at his parents as if seeing them for the first time.
From camp, we went directly to Knox, IN, where we met up with 5 of my friends from high school and their families. We had a total of 12 adults and 9 kids, all age 5 and under, staying in one house for 3 nights. It was mass chaos, but also one of the absolute most fun weekends of the year. Even though I hadn't seen some of them since the last time we took this trip two summers ago, we all picked up right where we left off. The house had a huge field and giant rope swing for the kids, so our days were spent watching the kids play in the field, and our evenings were spent sitting in the hot tub, staying up way too late, laughing until our stomachs hurt and reminiscing over our high school days. We did even manage to squeeze in a pizza party one afternoon with everyone. It was one of the more relaxing 50 pies parties we've had, with the kids running around in the field or taking turns on the swing, and the parents sitting on the back patio, listening to Scott's pizza making playlist (which is always the same and always a good vibe) while chatting away or playing corn hole with the warm summer sun slowly setting behind us.
Ok, we are coming to an end of our whirlwind here, but one more stop. From Knox, IN, we headed back north to see my aunt and uncle on their farm in northern Indiana for a few days. They have 40 acres, a pool, horses, goats, chickens, dogs, cats, peacocks, geese, and other various animals roaming around, so it was the perfect place to recover for a while. Which was good that we had recovery plans, because while there, the kids came down with hand, foot, and mouth (that's what you get for putting 9 little kids together in a house for a weekend). It was a bummer, but it forced us to slow down and relax. We had plans to see one more friend from high school in Ohio the following weekend, but hand, foot, and mouth puts an abrupt end to your social calendar. After a few relaxing days at the farm, we got back on the road to campgrounds once again and headed to one on the boarder of Indiana and Ohio to recover and get healthy before we met back up again with more people, our travel buddies, the Herds, in a week.