Travel from Home to Whitewater State Park, MN
As I mentioned in my last post, I'd been avoiding the fact that we were even going on this trip. That led to some under-preparation which led to John and me being up until midnight packing the RV (after driving an hour each way to pick it up).
So, we were already tired when we finally got on the road this morning an hour behind schedule from what we'd planned. Being in the rental RV took some getting used to. We had to find secure spots for things that rolled or jiggled too much. It was loud: the shaking and rattling, the tires on the road, the AC – all loud.
We stopped in a random parking lot to fix ourselves sandwiches for lunch (because we were behind schedule to make it to the picnic area we'd planned) and continued on until we got to our first point-of-interest, the Wisconsin/Minnesota border at the Mississippi River.
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| Mississippi River at the Wisconsin/Minnesota Border |
We made it to our reserved spot at Minneiska Campground in Whitewater State Park in time for dinner – more sandwiches. Though we did get a small fire going for dessert. There's no point in camping without s'mores!
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| s'mores |
The RV has a TV but we were not planning on using it, so we didn't bring any DVDs. Of course, already on the first night, none of us wanted to be outside. To be fair, it was miserably hot and we were all tired and just wanted to chill in the AC. So, John was trying to figure out if he could get Netflix on the TV or screencast to the TV from his phone and he found that a DVD had been left in the DVD player: National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation. Ha! It's one of our all-time favorite holiday movies; we watch it several times each winter. This was the first time we watched it in June, though.
John and the kids did take a walk to explore a bit after it started to cool down in the evening. I just wanted to take a nap (though I wasn't actually able to fall asleep).
All in all, day one was not the smooth, wonderfully planned and well-timed sort of day we are used to, but it wasn't a bad day or a terrible start to the trip.