Written by: Amanda Abplanalp
Have you ever taken a vacation where trying to get there completely goes wrong? That is what happened to me on one of my camping trips. A couple of years ago my boyfriend and I thought it would be nice to get away for a week. We both enjoy camping so we decided to head up to Door County Wisconsin for our week getaway. I was really excited because this was going to be my first time going up to Door County. Somehow I grew up in Wisconsin without ever going there. We both couldn’t wait and had everything planned out but then that is where things started to go wrong.
We decided to leave on a Friday after I was done working a half day. It was my duty to go and get all the groceries and to make sure all the coolers were packed. Once the clock hit noon, I left work and hit the grocery store, which is a great time of day to go because it was relatively empty. Once I got all the groceries, it was time to head home.
To give a little backstory, my boyfriend and his sister had just recently bought a house where we were all now living, but I did not have key to the house yet. I didn’t think it would be an issue that day because my boyfriend and his sister both work from home usually. However, when I got home and grabbed the groceries out of the car and headed up to the door, I found out the door was locked. I rang the doorbell several times with no answer. I started to call and text in a panic since I really needed to get inside to get everything ready for the trip.
Once I heard from them they both told me they wouldn’t be home until at least 3:30 p.m. Needless to say that wasn’t going to work for me. Here I was standing on our porch with no way to get into the house. Luckily for me my grandparents live right down the road and they said I could come over until my boyfriend or his sister got home.
I arrived at my grandparents and I went right to work. Some of the meals I planned for our trip I had to prep before hand. The main thing I had to get ready was a cake. I saw this cool post about cooking a cake in oranges in the coals of a fire. As I was waiting for the call or text when someone would get home, I prepped the oranges and cakes. Once I had everything prepped, I hopped into the shower, which calmed me down a bit about how the day was going so far. However, when I got out I saw I had a lot of missed calls and texts. Some of it was good news and some of it was not.
The good news, my boyfriend’s sister was finally home; the bad news, my boyfriend was on the west side of Madison with his motorcycle broken down. So, in a panic I rushed home to drop off the food. Once I ran all the food upstairs, I was back in my car to pick up my boyfriend. I somewhat sped over to where he was, being ever aware of cops.
When I arrived to where he was at, he sat down exhausted and said he had to walk a mile with his bike to the location I picked him up at. Clearly, we were both not having a good day and then of course heading home the rush hour traffic already started. At this point we were already way behind schedule so he asked his sister to pack the coolers so we could have at least one thing taken off our plate.
When we arrived home, my boyfriend quickly got all the camping gear in the car and hooked up the wave runner and canoe. I rushed upstairs to grab all the food, drinks, clothes, pillows, etc. His sister and I rushed all those items downstairs to the car so we could help my boyfriend finish getting the car ready. It was probably the fastest I ever got a car packed. After all that mess, we were finally on our way.
Since we were behind schedule we knew when we arrived it would be dark. We were right on that and imagine trying to set up a tent in the dark. It was not fun. Once we had the tent up we started to relax and watch a movie, but then we heard the dipping of water coming from the sky. Silly us didn’t end up putting the tarp to go over the top of the tent so we then had to get up again to do that in the dark Once we got done with that it was back to relaxing in our tent.
Despite all our troubles with the prep, we ended up having a wonderful and amazing time. It was also a good lesson that nothing ever goes to plan so you best enjoy what you get. That is exactly what we did.
