Early in the year, we had planned to go on a family trip to Chicago before school started. Ever since we took a trip there in 2017, the kids have talked about it and we knew they would love to go back. Since the trip was planned for later in the summer, we thought we could spend more time at the lake. Things weren't any better in terms of COVID cases, so we decided it was best to just stay put. We were afraid that our experience wouldn't meet our expectations and the kids would be disappointed. Or even worse, one of us would get sick and we'd have to quarantine and couldn't do anything! We weren't sure which restaurants or exhibits/tourist attractions would even be open. To make it up to the kids, we tried our best to plan things to do that were fun (and safe).
We took a bike ride down on campus and grabbed Adriatico's pizza and Buckeye Donuts for dessert (our favorite campus things)
Our friends had gone hiking at Camp Lazarus - we learned (at the end of our hike while having a picnic lunch) that the campground is private property and we should've never been there! It was interesting to check out a new spot, though! Ha, it will be our first and last time! To this day, I still don't know where our friends normally go - I'll have to ask her!
Lots of broken pieces of shale!
The kids had baseball and softball games
We spent one day rafting on the Mohican River! We hadn't received a lot of rain in August, so the river was super low (and moving super slowly). It's a 7 mile trip and they warned it can take 4 hours if you're paddling and up to 6 hours if you're just floating. We did a mixture of both and, luckily, it only took us about 3 hours to get down the river. I don't think the kids could've handled a much longer trip. It started out really fun, but I think the activity lost its luster after about an hour and a half. The temperature also started out warm and then got a little cool! Colin leaned over the front of the raft a little too far at one point and fell in! I had to jump out of the raft and grab him by his life jacket. He was a little shaken up and scraped his face on some rocks, but he was okay. He was soaked and I didn't bring a change of clothes, so he was pretty chilly afterwards. Even though the trip took a little longer than we would've liked, we still had fun. We could see fish in the river, we stopped and had a picnic lunch, and it was just something totally different than anything we've done before! If we do it again, I think we'd try a canoe next time. We saw some families of 4 that split up into groups of 2 - each parent had a canoe and they tethered a tube behind that a kid could sit on and float! The canoes were easier to maneuver down a shallow river. I think the parents would bring along some booze too 😉
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