We're back from another...yes another...camping trip. This one was the annual Wiessner/Pinkster/Knight/Beavers campout at Michawana. No bike wrecks this time, and ziplining for all, even Missy. THe weather was cool but not cold, it stayed dry, and everyone had a very nice time. Walldorff's and Plainwell Ice Cream on the way out comes standard.

I'm back from a short business trip to the Philadelphia area. Myself and another guy from work were sent to the UHMWPE conference and symposium at Drexel University. Sounds thrilling right? I was presenting a poster and getting a listen to what everyone is saying about vitamin E. Seemed mostly positive. I also had just enough free time to do a little bit of geocaching. Including a full body sprawl into a muddy trail though a thicket. But I found it!

We spent this weekend camping at Spring Mill State Park, down south. Unfortunately we ran out of time before we ran out of things we wanted to do, so we'll have to get back there again sometime soon. We left after I got out of work on Friday, so it was pretty late by the time we get there and got set up, but we had a very nice spot on a hill (which made us worry every time the kids went down it on their bikes or scooters). We had a really busy but incredibly cool Saturday, in which we first hit the orchard shops out in town. On the way back into the park, we passed a farmhouse with what looked like the world's biggest yard sale going on, so we stopped to look around. I think the family there travels around to auctions and such buying things to resell...there was some of everything there. Knives, video games, glassware, clothing, appliances, you name it. We all found a few things (Alex found a Game Cube video game and controller that will work on the Wii, Missy found a remote controlled robot dinosaur, Beth found some glass, and I found two softball sized geodes. All was cheap cheap cheap...the geodes were 50 cents each). After lunch we hit the Gus Grissom memorial at the park, then did the cave tour in a boat. The park has a cave with a river running through it that they take visitors through in a boat, which is really cool.  and hit the road again. We were on the road for a while after that driving down to Marengo Caverns, which is a commercialized but amazing cave system even further down south in Indiana. We took one of the longer tours which involved quite a bit of hiking through several levels, and seeing a lot of stalactites and stalagmites, cave bacon, reflecting pools, rock ledges that ring like a gong, flowstone, etc. Once back outside they had a panning for gems and arrowheads setup, with a long trough with running water.The kids had a blast. On the way back to the park, there was really heavy traffic going in, come to find out that the Persimmon Festival was going on this weekend and that night was the candlelight tour of the pioneer village at the park. But traffic was so backed up and so slow that we were moving in line for over an hour, and by the time we got to the village, it was almost closing time (don't know if they were going to keep it open longer due to the heavy traffic) and we needed to get the kids to bed. Late. So, we hit the village in the morning, when everything was over and almost deserted. Such a cool place though, and they had the sawmill setup and running. Amazing. We did the tour of the village ourselves...I LOVE the sawmill...and got in some geocaching in the park before hitting the road. We originally had planned to get to the railroad museum in French Lick but ran out of time. Bluespring Caverns will also have to wait.

We are back from camping at Chain O' Lakes State Park, and Missy's face is messed up. It all started with the labor Day camping trip.... Friday after I got out of work and the kids got out of school, we hitched up the wagons and headed to the campground, where we were spending the long weekend with the McCoys and the Myers', who were back in town visiting from Cincy. We all got moved in and set up fairly uneventfully in the incredibly sweltering Friday heat, but that wasn't to last long. Friday overnight was as close to perfect as we've ever camped in, with the windows largely unzipped and perfect humidity levels. Saturday was also nice, long enough for us to go for a swim at the lake for most of the afternoon, when it started clouding up. And cooling down. We all had our smartphones watching the weather roll in, thinking maybe it would miss us, which it did until after dinner. We got a big tarp tied up in the trees for some semblance of shelter, which turned out to be a good thing. Just when we thought it would all break up and go around us, there was a HUGE lightning flash and a HUGE clap of thunder maybe a couple hundred yards from us, making most of the kids scream, and it immediately started raining buckets. We all scattered to our respective campsites and waited it out inside, us while we tried to calm Alex down (finally using Angry Birds and his Gramma blanket to do so). We got everything out of the rain as best we could but the evening was basically over, and it rained most of the night. We did get showers before turning in so we were presentable for church in the morning; we did lunch with the Boschains and Myers' before heading back. Travis, Brian and I did get some geocaching in Sunday evening (but only after we found a friendly campsite neighbor with some jumper cables, since the kids had watched a movie in the truck and run down the battery) that was really cool....you were led to the cache by small reflectors mailed to trees that would have been almost invisible in the daylight. I'll have to set one up like that myself. Anyway, It had been more or less dry all day, but it was damp and cool, so the overnight was pretty uncomfortable; more so on Monday when as we were packing up Missy and JoAnna had a crash on their bikes and Missy went over her handlebars onto the asphalt head first. Luckily the crash was right in front of a campsite inhabited by a paramedic, so she was rushed back to us and checked out on a basic level very quickly. I just heard a truck pull up with Missy in it crying, and JoAnna say she had fallen off her bike and hit her head, and came out to see her bleeding and with an enormous swollen lump around her eye. Beth and Tabitha ran her down to the hospital in Columbia City while Travis and I kept packing up, then we took the kids down to get them when we got an all-clear. No permanent damage, no concussion, nothing internal, nothing broken. Whew, lucked out. Could have been much worse. The paramedic had thought she might have broken her orbit. Anyway, we had to have the truck jumped again to get down to the hospital, but we got there just as Beth and Missy were being discharged (Missy threw up on the mat on way out the front doors, but felt a lot better right away). We just finished packing up and towed it all home to rest after that.

We are just about ready to roll out for Labor Day weekend camping! Summer must be about over.