Warren Dunes State Park and Blueberries

Friday, Mike and I took my cousin's two daughters camping for their first time. Because it was their first time, we picked a State Park 2 hours from Chicago and planned to go for only one night.

We packed up our tent and equipment. Went to Target to buy the perishibles. Then went to pick up the girls...only an hour late due to traffic. After picking up the girls, we headed out on the road. At this point, in discussing our plans with the girls, I realized that while at Target, I'd forgotten to buy the hotdogs.

Halfway there, Mike pulled off the highway to get gas....in Gary, IN... and... ummmm... not in the best neighborhood in Gary. Then he proceeds to make a comment along the lines of "I think that guy has a gun in his pocket" which promptly scares the girls. Smart Mike....very smart.

We get back on the highway, toodling along and we stop again at a lovely grocery store and buy the hotdogs. Shortly thereafter, we get to the exit on the highway near the State Park. Mapquest told us to turn left. We should have turned right.

5 miles later, we turn around and find the State Park. There's a red flag by the station. Red flag = No Swimming. We're bummed but we know we've got tomorrow. We get to our campsite and set up our tent, get everything moved in.

It starts raining.

Our tent has holes in it.

At least 10.

The girls and I run to the "Camp General Store" and buy Ducktape. Mike duck-tapes the holes. We're dry....well, almost...There's a hole we can't find.

And now it's dinner time. And it's raining. So much for roasting weinies over the campfire. So we eat the sandwiches I'd packed for lunch on Saturday.

After we finish eating dinner... it stops raining.

We start a campfire and make s'mores. Yum!

Mike breaks the glass on the Coleman lantern.

We finish s'mores and get cleaned up, it starts raining again.

We go to bed. The queen sized airmattress that Mike and I brought to sleep on, we discover, has a hole in it. It goes from full to empty in less than half hour. Mike and I sleep fitfully all night. One of the girls wakes up in a puddle and finds her book completely soaked through.

5 a.m. Mike and I get up for good. We clean up outside the campsite and chat. At 7, we wake up the girls, have breakfast, and get the campsite packed up...throwing away the tent and the air-mattress since both were so holey-it was irreperable. We then packed the car and went from the camping area to the dune area of the State Park.

After climbing the tallest dune there (and seeing the Chicago Skyline from across Lake Michigan), we hiked around the State Park. We still couldn't go swimming (yellow flag = swimming would be stupid), so we left the State Park and went to a pick-your-own-blueberry farm. We had a TON of fun, picking blueberries. SO much fun we didn't want to stop... When we went to pay for our blueberries, we discovered that we'd picked over 23 POUNDS of blueberries. That was in under an hour! It also doesn't count all the blueberries we'd eaten while picking!

We headed back home after that, stopping once at Steak-n-shake for lunch.

It wasn't a perfect camping trip, by any stretch of the imagination. The girls, though, LOVED it and want to go camping again. So that...at least...was a success.

Too bad I'd also forgotten to bring my camera. (The picture on top I pulled off the web.)