We left Minnesota on Thursday, 30 August (yes, almost a month ago now) and drove straight through to Camp Philip in Wautoma, WI. We have attended Fall Family Fest here for a few years now and were looking forward to seeing Jared's parents and brother there. We did a low ropes course, tried archery for the first time, Jared ran a 5K and Avery ran his first race ever, a 1K!
Now let me take you back to the beginning of our trip. Do you remember all the issues we had with our tires? And how lucky we were that Ken was with us? Well if you've been reading along since then, you may have noticed that no other calamity has befallen us. But then we got back to Milwaukee.
We had left our awning out a few feet that morning and had completely forgotten about it. The 5 minutes of wind and rain completely bent the arms of the awning. And those things are thick. The wind must have been insane. So a few days later saw Ken and I removing the awning from the trailer since we couldn't travel with it attached like that and we had no time to even look into ordering a new one and getting it installed. While Ken and I were taking it off, the spring inside the rod of the awning spun the end of the rod around quickly several times onto his left hand. While he was on a ladder. So I got to sit on the other ladder and scream at him, "DON'T FALL!" while he half fell backward, then caught himself with his right hand by grabbing onto the dangling, broken arm of the awning. Meanwhile, his left hand is still getting hammered by a giant metal piece and he just had to sit there and let it happen or fall and die. So ten minutes after that happened and Ken was back on his feet, we were able to finish the removal of the broken awning.
Thankfully, it dawned on us that we might be able to file an insurance claim for wind damage. And so we did. Thank you State Farm. You will save us $3K. Those awnings are expensive.
Needless to say, it was with eager hearts that we got back on the road that Friday evening (Sept 7th if you're following along on your calendar), heading towards the Northeast and loop 2 of our Great Adventure!
Next up on the blog: Niagara Falls
Jared jumped up and hit the banner. I unfortunately caught his victory jump on the way down.
Literally, as soon as we got back within spitting distance of Ken, we got stuck in the mud. Apparently it had been raining constantly for over a week in southeastern Wisconsin. The second we pulled onto the grass, we knew we were doomed. Luckily, we were literally one mile from Ken's house. So he came over, we tried a few things and then decided we had to unhook the truck from the trailer to at least get the truck out. Ken ended up towing our truck out with a tow rope on his Toyota Highlander. Then, the truck had to pull the trailer out at an angle with the help of a huge metal ramp placed strategically in front of the trailer tires. No pictures were taken of this feat as it was pouring rain the entire time it was happening. I was back at Ken's with the kids staying dry.
Also, it was a bumpy ride on the way back into Milwaukee with all the construction and this met us when we opened up the trailer:
Those bins had books in them...
Then, one of the nights we were back, we decided to enjoy an afternoon out on the river in my dad's boat. We arrived at the boat dock and suddenly, for five solid minutes, a torrential downpour came upon us complete with huge gusts of wind. Thankfully, we were able to wait out the storm in our cars and had no further incident. When we got back to the trailer, this is what greeted us:
We had left our awning out a few feet that morning and had completely forgotten about it. The 5 minutes of wind and rain completely bent the arms of the awning. And those things are thick. The wind must have been insane. So a few days later saw Ken and I removing the awning from the trailer since we couldn't travel with it attached like that and we had no time to even look into ordering a new one and getting it installed. While Ken and I were taking it off, the spring inside the rod of the awning spun the end of the rod around quickly several times onto his left hand. While he was on a ladder. So I got to sit on the other ladder and scream at him, "DON'T FALL!" while he half fell backward, then caught himself with his right hand by grabbing onto the dangling, broken arm of the awning. Meanwhile, his left hand is still getting hammered by a giant metal piece and he just had to sit there and let it happen or fall and die. So ten minutes after that happened and Ken was back on his feet, we were able to finish the removal of the broken awning.
Thankfully, it dawned on us that we might be able to file an insurance claim for wind damage. And so we did. Thank you State Farm. You will save us $3K. Those awnings are expensive.
Needless to say, it was with eager hearts that we got back on the road that Friday evening (Sept 7th if you're following along on your calendar), heading towards the Northeast and loop 2 of our Great Adventure!
Next up on the blog: Niagara Falls
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