BIG PIG 5: Days 1-3

Greetings!  I know it's been a while since I rapped at ya'.  After spending more than a year hunkered down during the pandemic, we're very happy to report that it's finally vacation time again!  We're on a new Big Pig trip, the first with Juliet, which we're calling "BIG PIG 5: The Light at the End of the Tunnel."  I'm right now sitting on the porch at Tom and Cher's new condo in Cape Canaveral with a tasty Keybilly Beer in hand--lemme catch you up to speed on what's happened so far.

We left Chicago Friday afternoon and, after battling traffic all the way down through the city, ended up in Tippecanoe River State Park in northern Indiana.  We were joined by the Bondis, Desmonds, Hunt/Gardners, and Anne.  This state park is kind of just there.  The river isn't particularly large.  There aren't any falls, or hills or limestone cliffs or gullies to hike through, like their are in central and southern Indiana.  It's mostly just a patch of flat woodlands with and an extremely crowded camp site.  That's ok!  Camping is fun on its own, and we even saw a snake swimming in the river with a fish in its mouth, so that was worth the price of admission on its own ($9, incidentally).   

James has camped out several times before, but Juliet was new to the game.  She slept on a crib mattress in the tent and, despite having a hard time settling down at night (it may have been the pop and smores), did pretty well for a first-timer!  In the morning we were joined by the Stals, but not before going on a 2.4 mile walk, which Juju managed along with the other big kids. 

The smores

Family tent pic

At about 1:30 Saturday, we packed up and hit the road, leaving the rest of the crew to stay another night.  Our destination: a random Days Inn in Murfreesboro, TN.  At six hours, this trip rivaled in length our previous family road trip record to/from northern Michigan.  It was fine, I can happily report.  We sort of bribed James to be good by playing the audiobook of the sixth Harry Potter book, which he'd been dying to read for months.  It worked like a charm (pun!).  In fact, it kept him mostly happy the next day, too, which hit the twelve hour mark (!)--from Murfreesboro all the way to Cape Canaveral.  Juliet was *mostly* good, but in the waning hours kind of melted down when she learned that we'd arrived in Florida (which, to be fair, was where she was told was our destination), but weren't stopping.  What didn't help was the 30+ minute stop over at a Publix in Palm Coast, home of the slowest deli line in history.

So, we made it by 9pm EST.  The kids were bushed and we should have hit the hay pronto, but after putting the kids to bed, Erica and I started the Dr. Thorne miniseries.  

What is the trip really all about?  Getting out.  Getting away from the four walls that have held us since March of last year.  The world is waking up, and we just want to lay in the sun at a beach.  Vacation, all we ever wanted.