Counts Family Vacation - Day 1

We realized that it has been since Feb 2009 since we've taken a trip with just the 4 of us.  So this weekend, we remedied that.  We decided to go camping (cheap, fun).  I insisted we stay at a KOA site.  While more expensive than a national park site, it also has more amenities.  The KOA site we chose, in Lena, IL, had crafts for the kids (which we did not do), ice cream social (which we did), wagon ride (yes), wine & cheese tasting (I had some cheese in passing), pool (oh yes), playground (yes), jumping pillow (yes), nice showers and bathrooms (yes and yes), fun bike rentals (nope), a Kamping Kitchen (pavilion w/ sinks and several burners for cooking - YES!), plus a handy camp store which sold a variety of things to us including firewood, cappuccino, coffee, ping pong balls, and ice.

So Day 1.  We left the house around 4pm on Friday afternoon, leaving Chicago.  Bad idea.  Everyone else is also leaving.  Traffic city.  Forever.  I think it took us about 3 hours or more to get there, but arrive we did.  We got the tent set up and everything situated while there was still plenty of daylight.  As dusk approached, the boys played on the (GREAT!) playground, and checked out the jumping pillow (Zach loved, Wy skeptical), while I put ice in our coolers and brought the car around.  Then off to a surprise...Thunder Valley Raceway in Pearl City, IL.  After 2 wrong turns (and 2+ extra miles of driving), we finally arrived at the raceway around 9pm.  This is basically a locals-only buy-in racing every Friday night.  Racing go-carts.  Basically in someone's front yard.  A 1/4m track of mud.  There were some small grandstands, which no one sat at.  Best part - FREE!

Zachary staring at the track, waiting for the race

Blurry race cars

Race car

Wy not thrilled at first - he did warm up to it once he got used to the noise

Two adults racing


The Junior class racing

It started getting late, and the Jr. class racing had lots of problems that the adults did not.  Several chains coming off, cars stopping for some reason, etc.  At least 4 times, adults had to go onto the track to fix something on a car.  I was getting tired and bored, and the kids were losing interest (well, sort of, it was more ME that was ready to go to sleep!).

Zach getting cold and silly

We left around 10pm and headed back to the campsite (with no wrong turns this time!) and we were all asleep by 10:30.

It was definitely a fun surprise for the boys.  I'm glad we found this place and went.  Thank the Lord that the rain passed by and didn't ruin our evening!