as written by Jeff

From Green Bay to Peshtigo, WI (44 miles)

We all woke up refreshed at the home of our friends Jim & Donna Kelly… We all slept in their basement on air mattresses and couches, so it was a little like camping, except more comfortable and no bugs (yay!) After a full breakfast of cereal, oatmeal, and eggs, we hit the road – 44 miles to go today.

Green Bay is a beautiful city, and it turns out, very bike-friendly. It has lots of bike routes, wide shoulders—and a beautiful bike path. As usual, we had to stop at a bike shop on our way out town, as the day before Cora & Elise had to stop every 10 minutes to fix the chain on the derailleur—it kept coming off of one of the pulleys. Ugh. The gear “teeth” on the pulley were almost completely worn away, so it couldn’t hold the chain where it needed to be. The solution: a new derailleur. The mechanic, John, at J B Cycle and Sports, was really kind. In spite of the fact that he had a backlog of repairs, he took care of us right away and even gave us a bunch of information about the route we are taking through the Upper Peninsula. He’s done the trip twice, going halfway around to Ludington & taking the ferry back across the Lake.

The delay was significant: we hit the road at 3pm with 37 miles more to go. However, I’m amazed at how the family is doing. We wake up pretty sore every day, but that fades within a few minutes on the bikes. Our stamina and speed has increased significantly too—our first 40-miler just about killed us (still want to write about that), but now it’s not a huge deal. And, believe it or not, we’re still all enjoying each other! The ride took us through the small towns of Suamico, Pensaukee, and Oconto—all lovely communities. We saw tons of cows, fields, farms, and wildlife: turkeys and deer are the really special ones.  Roadkill is also a common sight, but Elise turns away every time she happens to see that.

We arrived at our campsite at North Bay Shore Recreation Area in Peshtigo before 8:00, and immediately our crew got into action setting up the tent and preparing dinner. We were settled and eating within 90 minutes—a record for us. Dinner for us was Dr. J’s Chicken & Dumplings, as prepared in our dutch oven. Wow, delicious! The campground is on a harbor; people usually use this as a place to fish or boat on Lake Michigan. So, lots of kids were fishing the harbor too; Caleb was so bummed that we did not bring our fishing poles.

Getting dinner ready

Our campsite: right next to the harbor

As we began to settle in for the night, we learned that a storm was coming, so we were extra careful to put things away and move things away from the tent walls. We should sleep in relative peace… right?

The rain started about 11:30. It came in gently, like a lamb, but soon began to roar like a lion, with lightning everywhere and torrential rain. I stayed up to make sure that everything would be okay, and soon I found myself dancing between sleeping children, moving from place to place in the tent to mop up puddles that were forming. The back of our tent was getting a full onslaught, and water was almost pouring in through the zipper, right by the heads of Joshua, Caleb, and David. I dragged them further in the tent and began to bail out the water using a Norwex Towel. I gotta say, that towel absorbed about 100x it’s weight in water, I’ve never seen anything like it. But the rain was relentless! Water gushed down. I couldn’t help but think this may have been what Noah experienced on Day 1! Eventually, the rain died down a bit, and I made a levee to keep the growing pools of water away from sleeping kids. And I went to sleep around 1:30, exhausted.

2:30. “Jeff – there’s water in the tent!!!!” Huh? I was so out of it. Joshua woke up to a sleeping bag soaked with water. The growing river was threatening the other boys too. After moving the boys further in, Angela and Joshua began bailing out the tent with the Norwex towel. They did this until 4:30, when they gave up due to a combination of lighter rain and hopelessness.

A picture of Lake Wenger, named after our tent that let the water in. Joshua’s blue sleeping bag was used as a levee to keep the water at bay. Yes, that’s David, sleeping in a wet sweatshirt, who never woke up during the night.

That’s our fire pit. C’mon Elise, start a fire for breakfast!

Look ma! Raisin hands! 15 minutes after getting up!

We all woke up around 6:30am and witnessed the final result. The boys were sleeping with Angela and me, and almost everything in the tent was wet. Miraculously, David slept through it all. Almost 4 inches of rain fell, and there was water everywhere–ponds and lakes popped up all over the campground where there were none the day before.  We stung up a clothesline in a vain attempt to dry some things out, but it had little affect. We just wanted to get out of there and get to our next site so we could dry everything out, so we packed up and left for our next destination: JW Wells State Park, in the wonderful state of Michigan!