On our way...

I’m writing this on Saturday, but I figured I’d post our trip day-by-day. All 3 of my boys are sleeping and I just woke up from an afternoon siesta, so I figured what better time to jot down some vacation memories.

We were all so anxious to get out of the house Thursday, but what do you know- my Norton Antivirus on my work computer at home decided to bail on me. I spent nearly 2 hours on the phone with Norton tech support while she uninstalled and reinstalled Norton by remote access. Its working now and everything is a-ok, but I just couldn’t bear to leave my work computer (not to mention the computer that has ALL of my picture on it) unprotected for the entire weekend.

Typical Barczak style, we ‘planned’ to leave around 4, thinking Ry gets out of work at 3, he’ll get home and we’ll pack up the back of the Durango, pack up the boys and hit the road. However, we didn’t get on the road until 6pm. Go figure.

Our trip up was fine- we missed an exit and had to do a double turnaround to get back on that highway which pissed Ryan off. Porter was pretty good the entire 3.25 hour trip and Hudson didn’t make a single peep. We admired the sunset and scenery that had in the past become like the back of our hand and now was refreshing to see again after so long. We had printed directions up to Silver Lake but our memory served us right and we still pretty much still knew our way there.

See- we love camping near Lake Michigan. Its such a world away from the typical, it seems. Its so near to our hometown, but yet FEELS so far away. Its such a special place and I feel so lucky to live so near to so many awesome vacation spots. It feels like we 'almost' live near the ocean. We have our favorite beach towns that we visit- Holland, Grand Haven, Van Buren, Ludington, but Silver Lake is our favorite. And when we think about it- its so different from our other vacation spots. The other towns have the big lighthouses (so does Silver Lake- Little Sable), and piers to walk out to the light house and a nice little town that’s walking distance from the beach and lighthouse. Silver Lake is a small town. There are no restaurant chains- there are just a few small town restaurants, a Craigs Cruisers go cart place, a handful of small, local touristy shops, a couple ice cream places and a bumper car and bumper boat and mini golf place. The dunes and the lake are the main attractions here. We love that for nearly every regular vehicle there is a dune buggy or big dune truck or Jeep Wrangler driving around. Everything feels so cozy and close knit here. We just love it.

Anyhow, we didn’t get here until 9pm and it was dark as we set up camp. We still made time for a campfire and smores and didn’t crash (except Hudson) until 11pm.