Gettin' down and dirty with Mother Nature!

On a whim Sunday Paul and I decided to go camping for a night on Monday. We found this campsite about thirty minutes away in Kickapoo State Park, I know great name, but the place got outstanding reviews on all the websites we found. It was late Sunday night when we said aright lets do it! So we booked a rental car online, and were pretty certain the campsite would be empty since it was a Monday and they don't take reservations we would just take a chance.

We walked fourty-five minutes to the car rental place in the August heat, Monday morning, walk up to the counter, went to open my wallet to show my driver's license and credit card; and apparently I took my license out of my wallet for some unknown reason and it wasn't there! The sales guy was totally cool about it, we told him we walked there, and it would have to walk back to get it. So he offered to have one of the other guys drive us home, pick up my stuff and bring us back, that is SERVICE!

Finally got the car, which was a Chevy Aveo, which looks like a clown car, but it was a fun little car! Truthfully I wanted to test drive one for a while as we may be in the car buying market, and what a better way to find out how it runs then take it on a highway driving test! ( I love this little car!)
It was about an hour later we hit the road, and made our way to the campsite. There was nobody there in our tent area, we had our choice the lady said. We get down to the area, and find a huge lot next to a set of stairs that take us down to the river where you could just watch people fish our enjoy the silence. By the time we got our tent set up, which is really easy until we get to the fly part and we have never been able to totally figure out how to put it on, it was like 3pm, kind of late to start a hike, so we decided to stay another night. (Our sad looking tent)
From there we thought well let's take a little adventure and see what is around us out here, come to find out there was a vineyard, about 10 miles from the camp site. On route there we thought we better make sure they were going to still be open. The owner answered and said they typically aren't open during the week, but since he was there, he would wait for us. It was the coolest place, the owner was so friendly, he let us try all the wines he had, then he had us try some wine sorbet he had made. Let me tell you it was delicious! Of course we bought the mix for that as well as a bottle of wine and some gourmet crackers. Who knew we were such elitist campers. He was telling us how they have live music and wine nights every Friday night right up until the end of October. We are definitely going to make it a point to take our family there when they come to visit us.

The next morning we got up early ate some breakfast then got ready to take a hike. We decided we would do part of the "in and out" trail they called it, we started on the trail which was in the woods, really nice, then it opens to this giant field of wildflowers and butterflies and dragonflies
it was very little house on the prairie. At the end of that somehow we missed the sign for the hiking trail and ended up on this dirt road. At this point we had no idea where we were at, and there was a swamp on one side so we were being swarmed by all sorts of flying things. Now I love camping, and I can deal with most bugs, just not large ones. At first I was like "oh look at the pretty butterflies", until they kept pinging themselves off our arms. I was getting really irritated by now, lost, hot and buggy, my deadly cocktail of deet and sunscreen was not working! Paul notices that I am not enjoying myself at this point along the dirt road, I think we had gone at least 5km, and agrees to turn around. As we are hitting the meadow he notices the sign for the trail, that we would have walked right past the first time, not sure how we missed that!

From there we went to the Kickapoo landing, we really wanted to do some canoeing but the river was quite low, I noticed they had paddle boats, and I have never been on a paddle boat. I saw a grandmother and her 3 year old grand-daughter out there on the lake and thought why not! I let Paul drive the paddle boat, next thing you know he is all drunk with power and starts driving and looking the other way as we are heading into some low lying trees.(And he wonders why I think he should take driving lessons before getting a scooter). I start to panic thinking we are going to bottom out, he finally clues in and turns the thing around. Then we are cruising along the lake and I see people fishing in the distance, then all of the sudden this head pops out of the water in front of us! I shriek, thinking I just saw Nessie and its about to jump in the boat! Turns out it was a turtle, coming up for air. Ooops. I have to admit it was a lot of fun though.

After all that excitement we went back to our campsite to get a shower. You had to drive to the showers, so Paul waited for me in the car, and I came out telling him how great it was, then all of the sudden this Cicadas,(giant ugly flying beetle like thing) starts circling my head, and I have a terrible fear of these things landing in my hair, I know it's crazy but it has happened before as a kid, and last week, so I usually wear large hats to avoid this and the sun. It wouldn't leave me alone, so I dived into the car leaving all my stuff outside, then it started taunting Paul.LOL.

I know I am a city girl, I will admit it, but at least I make an attempt at hanging with Mother Nature and her Posse. Last night we made dinner on the open fire pit, it was very Blazing Saddles, and watched the sunset, and what is a camping trip without the Jiffy Pop Popcorn?! I got that going, and I am not the neatest popcorn eater in the world, so I had dropped some everywhere and Paul kept talking at me something about raccoons, with my headlamp on I went around picking up all the bits of popcorn, and I couldn't see what it was, I though it was popcorn, but it was slimy and wet, and threw it in the fire, I still have no idea what it was, and I don't want to think about it given the many number of creatures there were around.

As we were leaving this morning we drove to the nicer washrooms, since the pit toilets just weren't working for me, it was about 6:30am and there was at least 10 white tailed deer walking around. There were two mothers , each had a fawn with them. Not far from there I saw a huge buck, and then another mother who was limping with her older fawn. It was pretty amazing. I felt like Snow White they just stood there looking at me, looking at them, gnawing on their grass. That is what it's all about.