(this is Jeanette posting)
We had a great time camping over Memorial weekend at Interstate State Park in Wisconsin. John and I were the first to arrive at our campsite on Friday afternoon. We set up our tent and enjoyed the beautiful weather. Saturday was a gorgeous day also, and we went for a little group hike (about 1.5 miles). Normally I’d want to do much more hiking, but being pregnant slowed me down a lot. And there were a lot of little kids in our group, so it worked out well to go for the shorter hikes. Unfortunately our friends the Brazeltons (who organized the camping trip) were not around too much due to Paul’s recent bike accident, but they did hang out at the campsite most of the day on Saturday, and for a bit on Sunday.
We ran in to some not so nice weather on Sunday. Saturday night/Sunday morning a thunderstorm came through (around midnight), but it lasted less than an hour. Sunday morning started off pretty nice, but we could see there were a lot of clouds and it looked like more rain was coming our way. At this point everyone decided to go home Sunday evening, instead of staying until Monday morning. We went for another little hike before lunch, and got a good view of the gray skies. Just before dinner we decided to pack up the non-essentials (which was pretty much everything but stuff to make dinner, some chairs and the Thanghe’s “group” tent), since the sky was beginning to look quite threatening. We started feeling raindrops as we were loading up, and just as we finished up the rain came in a downpour. The guys moved a picnic table with the propane stove under the tent awning, and John made dinner – which we’ve now dubbed “Thunderstorm Spaghetti”. The rain came down pretty strong and we saw a little bit of hail too. The park ranger even stopped by to inform us of a Tornado Warning – although they were pretty sure it wasn’t going to get too close to us. We ate dinner in the tent, and lucky Ein got to clean up after the kids - who were eating spaghetti with a spoon since the forks were packed away. As soon as we finished dinner, we packed up the rest of the stuff and everyone headed home.
On our drive home we realized how serious the storms were. Once we were on 35 and heading South, we saw a lot of storm damage. Many huge trees were down, the roads were covered in green from leaves and branches (and snow on the side of the road! -John), and road signs were mangled. Thank goodness we didn’t see that at our campsite! Although it is pretty awful that it happened to others.
It was nice to get home on Sunday evening, we unpacked, showered and cleaned the dog. Monday was a pretty lazy day, which was nice. We had to wash the dog again, since he managed to roll around in some racoon poop near the campsite – very stinky stuff!
Along with our limited gallery of camping pictures, here’s a nice shot of the campsite on Saturday just before lunch time.
