"Tent" Camping

Wylie loved going camping last summer and remembers it clearly. He talks about how we had to leave early because Mom had to go to the hospital. Shortly after Tori was born we realized the mountain ahead of us, financially, and decided it would be best to sell our brand new travel trailer. Good decision on our part but Wylie just didn't understand. He thinks it wasn't very nice of " that Man" to come take our camper. The same time the "man was taking our camper he got stung by a bee the first time. That was a really bad day in Wylie's world.

So months ago we made reservations to rent a cabin at Yogi Bears-Jellystone in the Wisconsin Dells and told Wylie we were going "cabin camping." Talking it up real big how cool it was going to be. Only to cancel the reservations a month ago because we thought paying over $600 to "cabin camp" was a bit ridiculous. Ok, so we have learned not to tell the kids ahead of time of our plans even if we have made reservations. Because everyday (literally) it was "how many days until cabin camping?" and I would tell him. Wylie would then ask, "how many naps is that?" This is his way of keeping track of the days. Well now we broke his heart when the mean man came and just took our camper, and canceled cabin camping, what can we do to make it up to him? We finally decide to bite the bullet and take the kids camping. Yep, real camping. We had to hype it up a bit and talk day and night about "tent" camping to make him forget about cabin camping. We bought a new tent, set it up, got all our stuff out and cleaned, etc all with him so he could help. Friday morning we are ready to go, weather forcast not looking so ideal. Isolated thunderstorms every day and night. How in the heck do we cancel yet again . . . that is not an option so we head out to Baker Park Reserve on Lake Independence.

I now know what my parents complained about when we used to ask them "how many minutes until we are there?" Yep, they were right that does get pretty annoying. So to make a long story short and sum up our trip it was a great experience for our kids. You realize as parents that you are doing these things for them, not you. So yes it is a lot more work then staying at home no question but to see how excited they are about the simple things: a campfire, walking sticks, bike paths, beach, worms, smores, sleeping in a tent, playing in the dirt, staying up late, sleeping in next to each other, picking flowers, eating hot dogs (twice)it is for sure worth it. They loved all of the events, most of which weren't real event just activities together.

A few things we didn't quite think through- we never looked at where our site was in comparison to the restroom. We are SO lucky we were about 40 yards from the bathroom which I became very familiar with. Between having to go myself and taking Wylie and Kasey I would guess we visited it at least 30 times. We forgot flashlights and lanterns, realized we need a way to bring our bikes next time (we got real good at speed walking), bring napkins (they do get messy), a screened in cover for the picnic table would be nice, cups (we really did forget them)and last but not least extra blankets because it actually gets cold in at night.