June 12-13 Adios bye bye

Today was the day we leave Scott Air Force Base, IL for good. After 3 ½ years we were way overdue for a change. I will miss the friends we have made & Annika’s classmates & the togetherness I felt when with the parents & children at Zion preschool. I remember how Dalton was so eager to go into his big sister’s classroom & how he walked in as if he was part of the group. He would get so upset when I had to grab him out of there. Poor kiddo. Part of me wanted to stick around so he too could go to that school & have the same wonderful experience, but it’s time to move on. Hubby & I agree on mountains so we will make Colorado our home….or that’s the plan anyway (let’s see where he can snag a job).

Anyway on the morning of the 12^th Kurt was so anxious to hurry up & leave which left me flustered & irritated trying to get everything together. I wanted to do a couple last loads of laundry before we left, but he said “we don’t have time for that” to which I replied “so you’re ready to go now?” he came back with “if the inside is ready then I’ll be ready in 15 min”. Well the inside was far from ready since the kids had just gotten up & were eating breakfast. He & his dad had gone to return the rental trailer his parents were using. I told him he wouldn’t be ready in 15 min & oh was I right. I love being right J  An hour later he was ready to go. I just had to say something about it so I commented “man that was the longest 15 min ever”. Har har. When we were finally on the road I asked him “so is this how we plan on leaving every campground every time or were you just wanting to leave the base in a hurry? I need to know if I should prepare myself for early morning crazy departures”. He replied “nope just wanted to leave the base”. Well that solved that & I was glad because I didn’t want to start off every trip being in a crabby mood.

So our first journey was a short one. We drove just a couple hours north towards Hannibal, Missouri which is known for Mark Twain’s book, Tom Sawyer. Of course someone got a little lost along the way (yes we have a gps) & we forgot about the flooding issues so some roads were blocked off & we had to follow detours. In fact one road was totally shut down & we had to park on the side of the road while hubby & his dad took the jeep to find a route thru town. He wanted to make sure the trailer would fit on the small dinky roads of that small town. We were good to go & once we got on the correct road hubby said “oh yeah this is where we wanted to be, see it’s all good”. Riiiight. Well we eventually made it to the campground & his parents stayed in a hotel a few miles down the road. We couldn’t help but notice about 100 kids & 30 tents or so as we drove to our spot. Ugh! But thankfully we never heard a peep from them. Once we got all set up we decided to tour the cave that was there on site, but guess what? That’s right all those kids were walking into the building to do the tour. Scratch that idea. So we headed into the little town to see some sights. We walked around the area where a few buildings were mentioned in the book & the kids posed by the white painted fence. There was some major street reconstruction going on so we walked over to get some yummy lemon gelato. Oh so good on that warm muggy day. There wasn’t much else to do so we decided to head back to the campground & get suited up to go swimming at the hotel pool. The kids love swimming & Dalton jumps in no problem. I tell him to “relax” & he floats on his back easily with his life vest on. I’m really looking forward to those swim lessons soon. After their swim we had a pizza party in the grandparent’s room then headed to the camper to catch some zzz’s. The next morning we did the tear down routine & went to see the cave. It was pretty neat & back in the day they encouraged people to autograph the walls inside & they said after trying to count them all they quit counting at 250,000. That’s crazy! We saw a bat sleeping up on a rock & that was about it as far as big excitement. We wrapped up that tour then headed to the quad cities to visit hubby’s aunt & uncle. They were putting us up in the hotel & I was looking forward to the big tub.