We are back home, as I'm sure most of you are already aware. We arrived in Rhinelander around 2:30 Sunday afternoon and spent the next few hours unloading the camper! It was kind of a pain, but much better to load it once before you leave and unload it once when you get home than to unload everything every night at a hotel!
As always, the end of a great vacation is kind of sad, but it's nice to be home. This year we have a week and a half between the end of vacation and the time school starts, which is great! The past two years we've arrived home from vacation the day before school starts, which is terrible! The best thing is that we finished all of our back to school shopping before vacation, so this week has been a nice relaxing one.
Kindra started volleyball practice on Monday. We had been told she would miss an entire week of practice while we were on vacation, but it turns out she only missed one day, which made her feel a lot better! She has had practice for two hours each day this week, but they don't have any more practice until next Tuesday. Then they will have practice for two hours after school each day, except for game days. Starting September 11th they will have games most Tuesday and Thursday afternoons through the middle of October. Living in a place like Rhinelander, where the towns are pretty far apart, some of the games are at schools two hours from here!
OK, back to vacation. To be quite honest with you, we were all exhausted the last few days of vacation and ended up skipping all of our planned activities in Bemidji, MN and Hayward, WI. We did stop at the park and take pictures of Paul Bunyan and Babe, but we didn't make the 30 mile drive to the Headwaters of the Mississippi River. The KOA in Bemidji was great though....we had Lumberjack Stew for dinner and it only cost $1/person!
However, the KOA in Hayward, WI was the best one we'd ever seen! This place was just unbelievable for kids. I tried to take pictures to show you how many people (kids) were at this place, but I don't know if you can really tell. It was just so busy, I'd never seen so many people doing so many different things at any other campground! It might drive some people crazy, but we thought it was great. There were kids playing basketball, kids swimming, kids playing volleyball, lots of kids riding bikes (and you could rent bikes), there was a huge water slide, a game room, and awesome playground...it goes on and on. They had a great pancake breakfast in the morning, they had kids activities throughout the day, like dressing up like a pirate, and wagon rides on a big wagon pulled by a tractor. Saturday night they had a dance from 7-10PM with a DJ, and at 830 they had a nighttime scavenger hunt for all kids. They had treasure scattered all over the mini golf course, and divided the kids by age. They let the little ones in first (age 1-5) and they had about 10 minutes to find all the treasure they could. Then they let the older kids come in...until they had found everything. This was all done in complete darkness with just flashlights, it was so much fun!! There must have been over 100 kids there...and of course a lot of parents too.
One more cool thing about the Hayward KOA is that you can go tubing on the river, it's a calm 2 hour ride down the river. They rent you the tubes, take you to the entry point in the river, and pick you up 2 hours later downstream! Sounds like something really fun to do when the kids are just a little bit older! I'm already envisioning a trip back to the Hayward KOA, and probably the Bemidji one too, next summer when Chris comes up (with Dad's awesome new camper!)!
So on Sunday we had planned to visit the giant muskie at the Freshwater Fishing Hall of Fame. We drove by, waved at the muskie and came home!! We are planning a long weekend, or maybe even a week next spring to visit the things we missed the last couple of days. After our busy vacation, we needed a couple of days to rest before we got home!
School starts Tuesday, and EVERYTHING else starts that next two weeks. I'll spare you all the details, it's too late to exhaust myself like that, haha. It'll be nice to get back into a routine though, and Noah is very excited to get back to school. The girls are excited to get back and see their friends. Noah just loves school! Amaya is excited to start dance class...she found the bag with her dance leotards and wore them all day and all night the past two days. Fortunately, she eventually spilled something on both of them and had to put them in the wash!!
I'm off to bed....more later!
Rebecca
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