Well, of course the drive took much longer than anticipated. You'd think we were used to that by that point. We finally pulled off the main road as the sun was starting to make its descent toward the edge of the vast horizon of corn. I had the GPS in one hand and the map in the other and I was 99% sure of where we were going.
99% is not enough. As navigator I became increasingly concerned that the farther we drove, the darker it was getting and the more the back country roads were looking the same. The GPS on the phone stopped working and so I had to rely on the map once again, trying to make heads or tails of where we were in relation to this stupid state park I'd randomly chosen off the internet. Convinced we were headed in the right direction I told John to keep driving. The long flat road went on and on and the sky grew darker and darker.
Eventually our surroundings became pitch black and it became apparent that we were nowhere near our destination. After a harrowing U-turn and some bickering we were finally headed in the right direction. We narrowly missed the turn into the state park due to the fact that there was absolutely no lighting. Once we got into the park there was no indication of where we should be headed. No map of campsites, no signage pointing the way toward campsite #64 (or whatever number it happened to be). We ended up driving up and down the rows of campsites for what seemed an eternity. Dinner time had come and gone. Kids were complaining, John was his usual calm self and I was seething in the passenger seat, angrily stating over and over how we were NEVER coming back to this godforsaken place and how this was the WORST campground ever.
We finally pulled into our pitch dark campsite only to discover it was on a complete slant and we'd be sleeping practically upside down. So we randomly picked an empty campsite that was more level and then did a scary, backing-up-in-the-pitch-dark maneuver with me yelling "turn, turn!" at ten o'clock at night and probably pissing off all our camping neighbors. At that point I just didn't care. I wanted to park the damn thing and get to bed! We managed to dig something out of the fridge to eat and then we all collapsed in exhaustion into our beds, ready to bid this day goodnight.
The next morning we woke up and finally saw where the hell we were. In the daylight it didn't look daunting at all; the previous night it seemed like a scene from a scary movie. We were indeed next to a lake but there wasn't much else around. The bathrooms were dirty and full of cobwebs and we were all forced to shower in ice cold water since our campsite only had electric hookup, no water. I whipped up some coffee and some shakes, John took some time to do some stretching after being on the road for nine hours the day before, and then we packed it up and headed out.
Next: Field of Dreams and Sisters of the Blessed Virgin Mary
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