Let's Go to Training Camp!

About a week or so ago we decided that we hadn’t been gone enough this summer and planned a quick trip to the Indianapolis for Colts training camp. I didn’t do a ton of planning prior to the trip, aside from visiting with Josh from Visit Hendricks County and perusing the VisitHendricks County website at the suggestion of fellow North Iowa Blogger Sara Broers of Travel with Sara. Hendricks county is just west of Indianapolis. Beyond that, I remembered that my sister and I had camped near Anderson several years ago when we’d gone to camp, and Googled that it was approximately an 8 hour drive. Apparently it’s a good think I didn’t make any real plans, because even the few plans that I did make changed about 1200 times!

Planning to leave at 8am from Des Moines after having spent the night at the Hyatt Place Downtown after the Midwest Rampage year-end banquet, we of course got on the road at about 9:30am. After a quick stop for coffee, we went home to grab all the bags that I had packed the previous day. Except, you know, I wasn’t as well packed as I thought, and that took a bit longer than planned.

So finally, at 12:30pm (I’d hoped to leave at 10am), with the kids picked up from grandma and the van filled with gas, we hit the road. We made it all the way to Cedar Rapids before we stopped for snacks at McDonald’s. After a few more stops for a little car sickness, we finally made it to Illinois, and didn’t look back until we hit Champaign, where we enjoyed a quick dinner at Fizoli’s and stopped for gas. We opted for Fizoli’s because while technically we can get it at home, we rarely do. Also, it’s cheap. And their breadsticks are delicious. It was a nice, quick stop until Easton fell off his chair, hit his nose, and covered both himself and J with blood in the middle of the restaurant.

About this time, we began to realize that especially with the time zone change, there was NO. WAY. We were going to make it to Anderson, IN at any sort of reasonable hour. So we back to Google we went, finding a place called Shades State Park near Crawfordsville to land for the night. We pulled in at about 10:30pm (remember that 8 hour drive? Not so much…), where they had just closed the reservation/ranger desk for the night. A great guy named Chad told us to go ahead and go in and set up, marked all the available sites on a map, and told us we could come back in the morning to pay and get registered. So glad “Iowa nice” is actually true of the entire Midwest.

We almost set up the tent in record time (a task we had not undertaken for like 4 years), but unfortunately, a pole was broken. So my fabulous husband channeled his inner MacGyver and fixed it back up, finishing the tent assembly process. We got all three kids in bed by 12:30am I think, and slept until 8:30am.

Highlights of Day 1:

• I’m not sure the kids fought even once.
• J and I managed to deal with the trips’ misfortunes without any arguments, either!
• E has quite possibly the funniest, most random personality of anyone I know. And that’s saying something. He would randomly scream out things like, “Staring contest!” or “Fireball!” from the backseat. Getting to spend time with him was a huge highlight of this trip after being away from him more than anyone else this summer. He has also learned every annoying childhood nursery and rhyme from his iPad, and put on quite a show.
• Don’t underestimate the power of “the Google” – who would have thought I could ever have such a go with the flow nature? In a million years? I’m known in my circle as the planner and the social coordinator for a reason, but this summer has definitely taught me a lot about flexibility!
• E seems to have some form of turrets syndrome – I don’t mean to make light of a real issue, it really just is the closest comparison I can give you for the visual of how random and out of the blue some of the things he yells are. For example: “Staring contest!” “Fireball!” “Bazinga!” “Stop cheating!”
• Finally, one of my favorite parts of the whole trip was A telling J that he should let the Colts know that he was (Midwest Rampage) Rookie of the Year because maybe they’d have him come play with them.