Cabin vacation

For parents with small children, vacation has two distinct definitions: a parent vacation or a child vacation. These never mix, at least while the kids take all-consuming attention, so parents must decide which kind of vacation they want. The vacation can be restful and adventurous for the parents, or the children. I’ll let you decide which we chose.

Before We Left

Vacation preparation can be arduous, but ours isn’t so bad. Then we get hit with the unexpected instead.

First, Amie spills boiling water across her belly. A screaming red welt two inches tall and a foot wide; a second-degree burn with skin tearing off in clumps.

Second, our kids have a terrible night’s sleep. I’m up at 4:00 a.m. with Graham, Amie’s up all night with Royal. Amie and Graham both have nightmares.

Alright, let’s go on vacation!

Day One

We cruise out of Evanston by 9:00 a.m. on Tuesday. The boys are content in their car seats, and we have cautious optimism for the five-hour drive to upper Wisconsin.

We’d never been to Kettle Moraine State Park, so our first rest stop lands us on the Ice Age Trail. Graham is overjoyed to be hiking in the woods. Even Royal, who sleeps in a sling on my back the whole hour, has a smile on his face. An acorn falls near Graham and he spents ten minutes telling and retelling the story.

Lunch is next, so we stop at a local restaurant in Fond Du Lac. In the waiting area, perusing a menu, we hear a thwack! - like dropping a two-by-four on a wood pallet. Oh God, please let it be wood.

Nope, that was Graham’s chin.

Scoop Graham from the floor; check his body; any wounds? No… wait, there’s blood on his shirt. Oh no, look at that gash under his chin!

We discuss whether self-applied steri-strips are sufficient, but we’re too shook up to make the call. The waitress points us to a nearby Urgent Care and we leave without ordering.

I go with Graham into the office. Rock him and talk about what had happened and what is happening. There’s a trope that parents freak out more than their kid at the doctor. It’s true. I’m nearly in tears waiting for the doctor, but Graham is calm. He doesn’t need stitches, just glue, to hold his chin together.

At a gas station to buy charcoal, (but they had only firewood) Graham and I toss cattails into a pond. Then I teach him the National horn blowing signal; pump your fist in the air twice in front of a semi-truck. Graham manages to get three trucks to blow their horns; he tells the story for the next week.

Except for a stop to feed Royal, we have no further delays. Google Maps said it’d take five hours, and our family arrives in nine.

Kati Ray booked a spacious cabin near Hazelhurst and was there when we pull in at 6:00 p.m.

Ah, to be in the woods! Ouch, what was that? Smack, gotcha mosquito! And there’s your cousin, and your uncle… the whole mosquito tribe! Make a run for the door everyone, before the mosquitos carry us off for dinner!

Kati, Amie and I are bummed to be in woodsy paradise and yet only able to enjoy the view from behind the cabin’s screen doors.

Amie situates the boys while I scramble to drag our stuff through the wall of bugs into the cabin. Then it’s time to cook our steaks. Scratch that, I froze them. Sausages then!

Oh, it’s a charcoal grill. Hmmm, I haven’t used one before, but how hard can it be? Pour in the briquettes, douse them in lighter fluid, start the fire, put on the lid. It’s past 7:00 p.m. and no, I should not have put on the lid. The grill is slightly warm and smoking without sufficient oxygen to heat up.

Change of plans. I pan fry the sausages inside. We eat dinner at 8:00 p.m.

Day Two

Kati mades coffee cake for breakfast and I brew coffee. We venture outside only to find the mosquitoes nearly as thick as the evening before. A breeze sweeps the deck of most bugs so we sit outside for an hour.

Kati leaves in search of a beach while we try to get our feet under us. She returns to report our first good news of the trip: there’s a small, sandy beach with a strong wind!

After lunch, we drive to the beach. I park in the shade by habit, only to be assaulted by a dozen mosquitos when I open the door. But we run for the breezy beach and enjoy nearly two bug-free hours in the sun. When we’re ready to leave, I pull the car a few feet into the breeze, open all the windows, and let the wind drive the cloud from our car.

Citronella candles are a must, so we opt to search for the nearest gas station in hopes of buying them out. Only my phone has no service and is nearly dead, so we drive in the blind. A half-hour later and we don’t know where we or a gas station are. We just manage to find our way back to the cabin, hungry and without candles.

If it were not for Kati’s father, T-bone steaks would have been out of the question. But Kati remembers her dad’s steps for a charcoal grill and we succeed at grilling up three delicious steaks. In the meantime, I start a fire in the fire pit.

We think the smoke from the fire pit is driving off the bugs for about an hour, but then the hardy ones show up. Mosquitos in body armor and gas masks. Out of sheer unwillingness to be beaten by the buggers, I finish up a few more s’mores and run for the door.

Day Three

The morning balances nicely between momentum towards our return trip and a relaxed start. The mosquitos and gnats come out to see us off…

It took nine hours to drive from Evanston to the cabin, but that included an hour hike and a trip to Urgent Care. Surely our return will take less?

Nope. Nine hours, again.

The laws of space-time don’t apply when driving with children, but we did make a couple stops.

First, we drop in at Neuske’s farm for smoked bacon and cheese curds. To save time (silly of us to hope, I know) we eat lunch at the farm.

Second, we enjoy a stretch at a truck stop. Graham is grateful to run around and try the horn signal on a new batch of trucks. He has less success than his first try, but only because he waits until after the truck passes to pump his fist.

Finally, we pull down our alley and up to the back door. Unload the stuff, and start dinner. Graham and Royal are both champs and go to bed in record time, which means we have just enough room to launch Zoom and lead a small group. Thankfully, Bronson and Alexis want to cut the call a half-hour short.

Vacation for the parents, or for the kids? You decide.