it’s monday morning, who know when i’ll actually manage to get this posted because yesterday, returning from camping, i felt completely overwhelmed by the enormous volume of stuff i need to do, inside and outside the house. everything.
but camping was fun, and i have many nice photos.
here’s a couple of photos that erica took from our learning-to-start-a-fire seminar.
as you can see, kim is doing a great job.
here we are on friday afternoon. by the time we got to the dunes, the place wasn’t full, but as the day went on, it sold out. such a popular place! and it looked like winter! barely any buds on the trees anywhere in the park. kim is on the right with her tiny tent, erica in the middle with her slightly larger tent, and my MONSTER TENT is over on the right.
they had to help me with the final steps of tent-putting-up, but i don’t think i did it completely right. kim’s tent is actually SMALLER than it looks in the picture!
right away, we started building a fire -that is, kim and erica started, and i took pictures. kim got it lit right away with her flint! yaaaay, kim! this is the first time they’ve had a fire when camping.
this is our little area; dang, i wish i’d taken a picture of the picnic table! because when we all got our bags and things out, the table was completely covered, and it reminded me of how the inside of our pop up always looks. except here, we had to put all the food back in the car at night cause of the hungry raccoons that come out.
we decided to take a shortish hike, and headed up the big dune. it was quite a hike.
at the top, we could see a sliver of lake michigan.
the descent – the sand was pretty deep, and my shoes quickly got full of sand.
so pretty! but it looked like winter. it was cool, but not bad.
i started kind of running down the dune, which was fun, and there are kim and erica. it was WAAAAY steeper than it looks here.
we walked along the beach towards a structure we saw in the distance. i had decided to be crazy and not bring a map, completely against my nature, so we didn’t know what the structure might be.
here it is – the concession stand! it looks really old, doesn’t it? it also looked like it was under renovation, but maybe it’s just closed for the season. there weren’t many people around.
there’s chicago! i wanted to know how far it would be to swim from the park to chicago, but i just tried plotting it on “map my run,” and it wouldn’t give me the distance over water, only over land. the distance on land is 43 miles, so it must be shorter if you swam straight across. but could you do it? has anybody ever done it? is it possible?
ok, i spent at least five minutes checking it on google, and i don’t think anybody has tried it.
as we hiked back up the dune, we saw this thing in the distance that looked like some kind of bridge. but erica kept saying that it was a mirage, and when we’d hiked up a little higher, we realized she was right. some women were hiking down at the same time, and when they got to that spot they said “what IS that?” so we told them, because we were now experts.
erica in her little tent when we got back.
AND NOW IT’S TUESDAY MORNING HERE IN SPFLD,
and yesterday was a blur of activity. i should have been resting up a little from the giant hike we took on saturday!
here’s kim and me, before we started out.
this is a shot from the bath house; the place was mostly filled with RVs.
we walked and walked, on pretty flat land, with all the trees with no leaves. finally, though, we got to a dune and climbed up it. erica never wanted her picture taken, so i took this of kim, and only realized later that erica was bending over. it looks like she only has half a body!
more sand, sand sand. it was much warmer on saturday, and when we got to the beach we stopped for a while and skipped stones. well, i tried – i actually managed to skip a couple of them after many PLUNKS of the stones just going straight down into the water.
we had to turn left to continue on the path, but we could see a pink structure off in the distance, in the opposite direction. i said that maybe it was a nice cafe serving wine and beer and snacks, so we decided to walk towards it.
i wish i’d taken a picture – we got almost there, but when we got close enough to realize it wasn’t a restaurant, we turned back. later, we found out that there were two house, and they were both “houses of the future” from the 1933 world’s fair in chicago! they’d been moved there, and people rented them. you can take a tour once a year, but i couldn’t find a date for this year. there are actually five different houses, and the pink on was the florida house.
a very tiny butterfly.
we walked and walked and walked, and were gone about four hours. we reached the concession stand, and there were many people on the beach this time. i saw a woman in very high heels, taking them off to walk on the sand. why did she decide to wear heels to the beach?
as we trudged up this very very steep dune, a couple was walking down, with the cutest little puppy ever. it was white and darling, and bouncing all around. they said it was his first outing! i wish i’d taken a picture right there. sooo cute and happy! hopefully they carried him back up the hill.
this is a close as i could make the shot. soooo cute!
i’d studied the map, and it said we had to take the “beach trail” which would lead us right back to the camp. but after we got to the top, we saw the wooden path down below where we could have simply walked a short way. but we wouldn’t have seen the puppy, so it was worth it.
the hike down was way way steeper than i’d ever be comfortable attempting, but because the sand was so deep it was fun to sink down it as we made our way down.
did i mention that there were lots and lots of dogs at the camp? dogs and kids. this great dane was the biggest one i saw.
this camper was called a road warrior i think, and it had a porch all around it! i couldn’t take a picture of the porch on the side because a guy was standing on it. why a porch? i can’t imagine why you’d want one.
we got back to camp and decided to drive to a little town 5 miles south, called chester. it was supposed to be full of artisans and things like that.
when we got there, it wasn’t so artistic, but we did find a little flower/gift shop full of some cool things, like this pillow, which is by the same person who made the wonderful cutting board that erica gave me.
but it was kind of ridiculously expensive, as we most of the stuff there, so instead, we walked down the block to a cute restaurant in an old victorian house. it had a big wraparound deck, and we sat outside and drank and had some delicious appetizers. it was fun to have a little break from camping. it was prom night, so a few overdressed teens went into the restaurant – it was a perfect night for sitting outside, but i guess that since they were so fancy, they felt that eating inside was more appropriate.
here’s the funny thing – there were leaves on the trees in chester, and lots of flowers blooming everywhere, just five miles from the park! i must have been because the park was right next to lake michigan.
we stopped to buy more firewood, and went back to camp and made another nice fire.
i roasted many marshmallows, which were delicious.
sunday morning, erica and kim wanted to get up and go, because they had lots to do before work on monday. so we quickly packed up and headed out by nine a.m.! very early, but it was good in terms of traffic on the highways skirting chicago.
i got home and started unloading the van and doing stuff, and at some point realized that i was COMPLETELY EXHAUSTED.
camping is a lot of work.
fun, but a lot of work.
on thursday, mom and i are are going up to chicago to see aunt sandy and a show, and we’re taking the train and staying in a hotel, so it’ll be an entirely different kind of trip. i’m excited about the train, but i have to focus on not taking much with me, since whatever i take i’ll have to drag all around. this will be a challenge, since i always like to have everything.
and in the meantime, there’s an infinite amount of yard work to do, so i must continue that right now.
i hope your tuesday is good.
ok then,
mrs. springtime hughes.