Staycation 2015

I had been planning our camping vacation for months. We chose to go to Indiana Dunes again because we had such a good time last year. We left for our trip on Monday morning and everything seemed to be going well. Ryder barely slept on the four hour ride but was in a great mood, we missed the rain storm, and we were making great time. We got to our campsite and shortly realized that things were slowly going downhill.

Once we parked in our lot we noticed an awful smell. Great. Camping next to the outhouse. We tried to think positive and began setting up our tent. Over an hour later we still couldn't figure out why it would collapse with every gust on wind. Fortunately, a wonderful couple brought us extra rope and helped us tie down the tent. We headed to the beach immediately after we got our belongings inside. Ryder loved the sand and water! He spent most of his time throwing sand at Seth and chasing after seagulls. It wasn't until after dinner that things got really bad. Ryder suddenly became very aware of every bug and decided it was a good idea to be terrified of them. So we spent dinner trying to convince him that the bugs were not going to get him. With severe storms on the way, we started to begin bedtime. Since Ryder really hadn't slept we were thinking he would go down easily. Boy were we wrong. After nearly two hours of screaming and massive tantrums and trying every trick in the book, we knew we had to make a decision. We quickly threw all of our things back into the car and barely even took the tent apart to fit it in. All the while, Ryder was screaming and crying to the point of getting sick in the car. We hit the road for home around nine. Ryder continued to scream for an hour before finally falling asleep. We were only two hours from home when traffic came to a stop on the interstate. After sitting on the road for three hours without moving (in multiple severe storms) we started to move. They had us turn around and reroute through a few different towns that had flooded and were covered in damage. We found out later than there had been a tornado that ripped through a town and across the interstate dragging cars, trucks, and house debris with it. It wasn't until the next day that we learned that a second tornado ripped through just five miles from where we were stopped, while we were sitting on the interstate. So scary! We finally made it home after seven hours and got a couple hours of sleep before Ryder woke us up for pancakes.

Even though our vacation started out awful, we are glad that we came home. Vacation would have been miserable had we forced our toddler into situations that he was uncomfortable with and we would have felt terrible had we made him stay with all of the fear he had. In the end we feel we made the best decision and we made memories that we wouldn't have been able to make had we stayed on the beach. There is always next year!

We made the most of our vacation turned staycation by heading to the zoo for the day. We had a great time and saw so many animals! Of course most of our time was riding the train and taking turns with Ryder on the carousel. We spent the rest of the week spending some much needed time at home with each other. I wouldn't trade our vacation this year for anything. Even if I didn't get my family picture on the beach.