I am a big believer in plans, checklists, details. Things just go smoother when I have a plan (and everyone follows my plan…). But sometimes life just happens. Plans fall apart. One of our most memorable camping trips came about because life got crazy and we were forced to be spontaneous.
The Plan
One of my daughters was invited to participate in my brother’s wedding. So my plan was to travel out from Wisconsin to Colorado and then make a loop back to Missouri for the wedding. We love to camp, and with a family of nine it fit the budget much better than staying in hotels. It was fall, our favorite season, which also meant that the weather would not be too hot for camping.
I generally plan our route, pick campgrounds, make reservations, and plan out the meals. However, we just did not have enough time for Colorado and I could not figure out where else we might want to go. Then life got hectic and the day arrived for us to leave and I didn’t even have a route picked out. My husband insisted that he wanted this vacation, so we just started packing the van. It was afternoon when we had things ready to leave.
Off Script
I grabbed the map (pre-Google maps) and calculated where we could get in the amount of daylight we had left. I rallied the troops, loaded everyone, and off we set with the plan unrolling as we went. For 
me, this was huge, because I really have a hard time switching plans. I think the thing that made me most determined was my daughter being in the wedding and we needed to be there.
One thing we tend to do as we travel with kids is to stop every couple of hours and let everyone run off a bit of steam. As we drove along, we found a sign to a state park that we had never visited, Natural Bridge. Since we were not really on any sort of schedule, we stopped and took a hike. Turned out to be a fun walk and a beautiful formation.
As it was getting dusk, we arrived at Wyalusing State Park overlooking the confluence of the Wisconsin and Mississippi Rivers. Since it was the middle of the week, and fall, we had our choice of campsites. We had just enough daylight left to get the tent set up and dinner made. Then we could enjoy the gorgeous sunset over the river valley.
When we got up the next morning we had several surprises. The fog was beautiful and thick; since we were up on a bluff, it would be really easy to step off and not realize it! Once the fog cleared, the views were amazing. The next surprise involved coon tracks. Every chair that we had sitting around the fire was now covered in coon tracks.
Iowa
From Wyalusing, we headed on the back roads across Iowa. We stopped briefly at the Amana Colonies, then found a beautiful state park, Rock Creek, near Des Moines. When Ken and I stretched out for a nap, the older kids not only watched the younger ones, but had dinner almost ready when we woke up.
The next morning Emily went to get a jacket out of the van, and discovered orange tracks all over the inside of the van! Ken and I started trying to figure out how we were going to get the coon out. That is when the kids let us know that there was a hole rusted through the floorboard in the back of the van…. We had no idea. They used to lift up the floor mat and drop things out the hole. Sigh.
So that explained how the coon got in. And out. And as it turned out, it was not just one coon. By the tracks, it was a mama coon and her tribe of littles. Feasting on Cheetos all over our van. UGH. I felt bad that we were responsible for feeding the wildlife junk food. It did delay our morning a bit cleaning up the van.
A voyage of discovery
Since we were reading Little House on the Prairie for school, we decided to loop out onto the prairie before heading into Missouri for the wedding. We visited the Western Historic Trails Center in Council Bluffs, Iowa, Tuttle Creek State Park in Kansas (more on this in another post), and Prairie State Park in Missouri. The kids were impressed and a bit intimidated by the bison, loved the wildflowers, and were astonished that there were trees in Kansas.
None of these discoveries would have been possible if I had had my agenda mapped out beforehand. We would have missed all the serendipity discoveries of travel without a plan. And it is one of our favorite trips ever. Maybe because we slowed down and really savored the places we were seeing. I still have a hard time being spontaneous, but I am trying to get better. This trip was a reminder of the fun we can have when I don’t get my well-crafted plan in place.
You can read my tips for a first camping trip here.