Beth and I went camping over last weekend. This was intended to be our first camping trip just us together, solo. No family or anything. Remember back when we found the Mitchell Persimmon Festival by accident a few years back (more than a few, see 9/18/2011)? Well I thought, we should go do that festival again! So we made plans to go camping at Spring Mill State Park. Now, one of the big attractions of the Persimmon Festival is the candlelight tour of the pioneer village, which is on the Saturday at the start of the festival, so I made a reservation to be there onsite so we could go to that, which unfortunately is a big enough draw that there were very limited sites available for Friday and Saturday, so I had to reserve one in the woods and then make a different reservation elsewhere for the rest of the week. Remember back when we got to the park and couldn't get the camper set up because the site was so steep (See 7/27/2014)? Well, I think we got the exact same site again this time, and we still couldn't get it set up. I took Friday off so we could arrive in the daylight with plenty of time to set up and cook dinner, but we spent a few hours trying everything to get set up (in the end, leveling the camper meant the back end was too close to the ground to turn the crank to raise the roof) including nearly getting the truck/camper stuck sideways in the next site over before giving up and asking if there were any cancellations we could switch sites to. Luckily, there was one that we could move to for two nights. By the time we got things set up there, it was dark and late so we went out for pizza in town. Saturday we went  looking for a cool and unique coffee shop nearby. There was one in Bedford that we found that had what turned out to be some of the WORST coffee drinks either one of us have ever had. Oooh, it tasted like dirty dishwater or something. Bad. Awful. Yuck. So we dumped both of them after a sip and found a Starbucks. Then we went to Bluespring Caverns (where the cave tour is on a boat) and an apple orchard / farm market, did some grocery shopping, and as it turned out, I thought Beth really wanted to see the candlelight tour and she thought I really did, and neither one of us wanted to that much...so we skipped it, and made cucumber salsa. Sunday it looked like rain, so we were hoping the get moved out of the site we were on and onto the new one as soon as possible, and the people in the new site just would. not. leave. They were packed up and ready to go for hours before they finally pulled out, and we dashed over there and set up as fast as possible, but by that time it was already raining. So we set it all up in the rain. We also found a really cool restaurant in Bedford for lunch called the Rusty Gator, which had an eclectic menu of cajun fusion. We had some awesome cajun potato skins. The park was pretty much empty when we got back to the site after lunch and we just hung out and napped for the afternoon. Monday morning I went on a hike. The state parks have these challenge hikes, I did one at Clifty Falls a couple months ago so I wanted to do the Spring Mill one, which was just 'hike all the trails.' I figured it would take around 3 hours, and go for around 11 miles. I planned the route on the park map and had everything all set. I headed out at first light and went on the most amazing, incredible, fantastic hike ever. Through karst forest, old growth woods, pioneer village, caves, lakes, dams, stairs, rivers, gorges, canyons, and about 14 miles and 4.5 hours start to finish. As I walked into the campground I saw Beth coming the other way, mad at me for scaring her because I was gone for so much longer than I said I would be. She was really worried. Seems what I told her was overly ambitious, pace-wise. The rain started while we were in town getting lunch with persimmon pudding at a church in town, and it rained a lot of the day. We checked out the festival activities when it wasn't raining Storms overnight and the next day. We drove to French Lick just to see what's what there on Tuesday and looked at the arts and crafts exhibitions, and on Wednesday we packed up and headed home. It was a good campout overall and we had fun, but Beth's back was really hurting after sleeping on the camper bed and it was so wet all week. Second wettest campout we've been on, I think, after Clifty Falls this summer. But we still love the park, even though Beth said at one point "I HATE this camper." I think our time with it may be drawing to an end. 

Meanwhile, while we were gone, Natalie had some work days at Starbucks, including having to get to work at 4:00 am one day (Mary Jane picked her up and drove her there). We left her some cash to get food while we were gone and she seemed to do all right. Poor Churro had to be in a cage for 8 solid hours when she worked 4-12 that time. She also worked an early shift Saturday after we got back, from 4-8, after which Beth came back and went back to bed and Churro shrieked the *entire* 4 hours she was gone. 

We decided to have a chill weekend after the camping trip. The most we did was search the town for jars for soup season. Yep, that's starting up again. 

We have returned from a quick trip to Louisville! We dashed down there for one night only for Lily Boschain's graduation party! We would have gone a day earlier but Beth and I had both signed up for the "Sent" conference at church, which was basically a training session for sharing your faith and how to live a sent life. It was good to go, but honestly neither of us really wanted to that much. It went from 8 until 2, at which point we immediately hit the road and headed for Muncie to collect Missy, and after the briefest of pickups went on to Louisville. We arrived around 9, at a motel that Beth had picked out because it was cheap and we needed 2 rooms for Beth and me and both girls. Under other circumstances, it was not what we would have picked (a Motel 6 by the airport) but it was just someplace to crash overnight. The room was adequate, but with things like someone's dirty clothes left in the bathroom. The toilet seat didn't fit the toilet. Renovations/repairs had been done...badly. The sheets weren't as clean as they seemed at first. Beth was bitten on the ankles repeatedly by...something. And of course, the airplanes landing all the time. But anyway. We went to the Boschains' church for the Sunday service and afterwards helped get things set up for the party in one of the activity rooms at the church. Blowing up balloons, hanging streamers and such. It was a good time and Missy loves hanging out with Jacob. We even re-enacted a 2009 photo of Missy and Jake together, just for kicks. After the party we all went out to Subway for dinner, and hit the road afterwards for Muncie, dropped off Missy, and headed home. 

 This week was slow. But: I can report that we did something fun this weekend. I know Todd was interested in seeing "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice" so I texted him if he wanted to go see it on Saturday, which he did. So we met him at the theater for an evening show. It was a relatively full house, too. We all liked the movie, but I had some notes. One of the side plots got resolved a little bit too easily and suddenly, for example. But I did like it and we had fun. 

Alex has returned to school now too. He and I made the trip out there again this weekend, and it gets faster and easier every year. We flew out of Indy again, which is so much easier. It was a 6:30 pm flight on a Friday, so I took a half day off and we headed out in the afternoon. Once again, we left in plenty of time for traffic jams and long lines, so there were neither, and we had a couple hours to kill once we got through security at the airport. An uneventful flight to SeaTac had us there at about 9 or so, and we caught a shuttle to a motel. Alex had plans on Saturday morning, there is a video game convention (Pax-west, whatever that means) that he goes to every year and he wanted to make sure he got to it, which is why we got the flight time we did. We just stayed in the motel room and got delivery for dinner, and in the morning I caught a shuttle back to the airport to get the rental. I hadn't wanted to pick it up last night so I could save the expense of another day. Anyway, I woke up in the morning and left Alex asleep as I headed to the airport, and it never really occurred to me that a) it was super dark out, b) there was practically no traffic, and c) there was hardly anybody around anywhere at the airport until I got to the car rental place and realized that it wasn't 7:30 am, it was 4:30 am. Pacific time. And the rental center was going to be closed for the next couple hours. I would up walking a mile or so back to the motel, unsure of how safe it was to do so, and going back to bed for a while. I got the shuttle from the motel back to the airport again a couple hours later and this time successfully got a rental car (minivan), and Alex and I headed to downtown Seattle. I dropped him off near the convention center and found a place to park, then I went walking through Pike Place Market and surrounding area for a while. I talked to Beth and the girls who were in Michigan for Julia's wedding, bought some salmon to ship home, and took a ride on the giant ferris wheel by the waterfront. Found a cool antique/junk shop right around there too. Alex was done with the convention by around 2:30, so we met up and headed towards Redmond to get him moved in. No drama with moving in this year, we knew for a long time where he was going to be. No Scott this time either, as he had some family issues to deal with and was away. Anyway, since I rented the minivan we got everything out of the storage unit pretty easily, although he's on the third floor of an apartment building so we had to schlep everything up three flights. And his bedroom is pretty small, so we had to be creative in where exactly we put things. We went to Target and Fred Meyer to pick up some things he needed for the apartment and get his groceries stocked for a bit, got dinner, and then I left him and headed back to the motel at the airport for a Sunday morning 8:00 flight back home. I had to stop and change planes in Chicago...and the flight to IND is really pretty short. After getting back to Indy, I met PJ at a brewpub restaurant for dinner. That was a great time... I knew I had to leave to get home before the middle of the night, but literally it was like I looked at my watch and it was 9:00, and then I looked again and it was 10:00. I did make it home by around 1:30 or so. Good thing it's Labor Day and I don't have to go to work. I did go running though. 

In the evening, Beth and I went to see "Twisters." I'd been looking forward to it. "Twister" is a movie that is so dumb but I love it so much. Watch it pretty much every time it comes on TV somewhere. And I wasn't disappointed with the new movie. 

A week ago Saturday, when I was on a group bike ride out south of town on a nice morning, I mentioned to Nate (the group leader) that I was thinking about maybe getting a new and better bike. He works at the Trailhouse and said they had a used bike there that would be pretty good for me and I should take a look. I got a text from him a bit later that there was another used bike that he didn't know they had. A 2020 Specialized Roubaix, full carbon frame, hydraulic brakes, thru axles, very clean, very nice, only about 140 miles on it. I went to look at it and test ride it, and asked them to hold it for a day or so. Asked Trey about it, and after he looked at it his advice was "buy it buy it buy it" so I got it. It's a $2000 bike, I got it for $900. Picked it up Tuesday, rode it all through Winona on the way home. It felt like I was flying even though my average speed wasn't any more than normal :)