The Oshkosh Arrival

We were up until past one a.m. last night, packing, getting the house ready, all that good stuff. I fell asleep some time after 1:30, and Steve's alarm went off at 5 a.m. Three and a half hours sleep. *yawn* A few last-minute things thrown into the Jeep, hauling out Kaylee who woke up most cheerfully, and we piled into the Jeep which was groaning under the weight, and went out to Glenndale. The truck, trailer, and golf carts were there waiting for us, so we unloaded the Jeep, loaded up the truck, and we were right on time. We wanted to be at Glenndale at 6:30 a.m., and we pulled in at 6:29 a.m. We wanted to be on the road by 7 a.m. and we pulled out onto the road at 7:01 a.m. Not bad for our little mostly-night-owl crew. ;)

We had been on the road for about 15 minutes when it occurred to me that I didn't know where my cellphone was. Sure enough, I have left it at home, sitting somewhere that I set it down 'temporarily' at 5 something a.m. So, I used Steve's phone to change my outgoing message to "I don't have a phone, so call me on Steve's phone." This does not please any of us, since we use the phones to not lose each other while we're out here playing around. I can't send little text pictures to Nathan to harass him since he's not up here yet. Nothin'. It is the ONE thing that we can't just go buy if we forgot it. Well, actually, there IS a Verizon store up here, with the new phones I've been looking at... ;)

It's funny, Kaylee was so excited to be driving this trip. When she found out we weren't flying in, she was delighted. Even when I told her that we could be there in an hour and a half flying or in more like 7 hours driving, she wanted to drive. Likeways, her little friend is coming up to Oshkosh in the back seat of the Mustang...and doesn't want to. He'd rather drive up and wishes there was someone driving up that he could come with. They have no idea how many people would dearly love to switch places with them! It's all a matter of what you're used to. To Kaylee, who takes most long trips in airplanes, and is done in less than 3 hours, a big long drive is an adventure where you see other cars and where you stop at places for gas and food. In the airplane, we get in, she sees blue (or white) sky for 1-3 hours, and we're there. On the way she has to wear a headset, which she dislikes, and we don't stop for hours. Poor thing, getting from Indiana to wherever in just a few hours with a dvd player hooked up through her headset, food and drinks, being able to unbuckle and wander around, getting there in a third of the time, in a nice big comfy airplane... :) I have to admit, she had it pretty good for this trip too. The truck we were in had a dvd player in the back with a headset, and she hung out back there and watched movies in comfort while I hooked up my iPod up front for us. It's got the whole GPS/XM Radio/digital touch screen display thing, so I spent the first portion of the trip figuring out all the gizmos and gadgets and workings. Very nice.

Steve did keep having one problem. As he was trying to change lanes more than once, he'd start to go over and halt abruptly because there was a golf cart back there getting ready to pass him. ;)

The trip itself was uneventful. One difference from last year is that we really didn't see many other people heading to Oshkosh. Usually when you get north of Milwaukee and south of Fon du Lac, you start seeing the herds of people, trailers, bikes, mobile homes, whatever headed for the campground. This year I saw two, and that's unusual. But once we got here, there was still a line of vehicles waiting to get in, and the campground is filling up pretty fast. We got our spot, but our trailer hadn't arrived yet, so we hung out at Chuck & Judy's camp where Kaylee and Maggie got to play for a few hours, or we sat out on golf carts at our spot. Finally, five hours after it was originally going to be here, our trailer arrived all set up and ready to go. It's smaller than last year's trailer, but it is also very nice and clean, and will do just fine. We got everything out of the truck and into the trailer, got the generators hooked up, and then we went out to dinner at Red Robin, one of our favorites around here for giant but good burgers.

There were 20 of us at dinner, which is impressive. ;) After we ate, we went to the store to get the food and drinks and supplies we'd need for the next few days to a week. Finally we dragged ourselves back to our trailer, unloaded all of that, made the beds and arranged Stuff, and fairly well crashed. We'd had lots of manual labor, not lots of sleep, and lots of travel. But...we've arrived. :)