Brothers Camping Trip

I love my brothers! Stephen did an awesome job of planning everything so all Daniel and I had to do was drive there. We met up at the European Market in Chesterton Indiana and had some delicious tamales for lunch. The market wasn't that big and took us 10 minutes to see everything. I was kind of glad because it was HOT that day; it felt like I was in Curaçao again. We jumped in our cars and headed to play some miniature golf and try out the batting cages. Stephen delivered his usual hilarity with off the wall comments including lyrics from a Missy Elliot song, which had us all rolling.

None of us had ever tried out the batting cages before and so we were all excited. Stephen and I grew up playing baseball and I don't know about Stephen, but I thought it would be really easy. There were 5 machines: 2 of them were softball machines and the other 3 were slow, medium and fast baseball machines. Stephen started us out by going in the medium one. After 10 pitches had gone by and he hadn't hit one, I thought I should go for the slow one, but then he got in his groove and hit most of the rest. Of the 16 pitches that were thrown I probably hit 2 haha. I blame it on the heavy bat.

Since Daniel doesn't play baseball, we started him on the slow one and he did great. He even went in a second time and we coached him on his stance and he was even better. It is really easy to brush away advice from the people that you love the most just because it is coming from them and I was proud of him that he didn't respond in that manner: he knew we weren't judging him and we just wanted to help. Can you imagine how much learning could get done if our pride could get out of the way sometimes? Anyway, we all had a blast. Sometimes it is just fun to smash things you know?

After dominating golf and baseball, it was time to focus on what really mattered... food... for camping. We bought some brats, baked beans and eggs among other things and headed out to the campground. The picture we all had in our minds was a place in the woods with separate campsites for each group but that picture was quickly altered with reality: we were essentially sharing a small field with 3 or 4 other families. So it wasn't what we expected... we could at least try it for a night and see how it fared.

I guess the employees had seen a lot of young people making trouble and so when they saw us, they were very condescending. We shrugged that off as well and went to set up our tents. We had only been there 10 minutes when one of those employees drove up in his golf cart and without so much of a greeting started accusing us of making trouble. Incredulous! Anyway, I won't get into it but after going off on us for 5 minutes, a car pulled up behind him and the driver said, "Not them... THEM!" as he pointed at the family behind us.

Starting the fire to cook on was another challenge and it was really rewarding when it actually worked! The first bite we took from the bratwurst was the BEST I've ever had haha. After a great meal, we cleaned up and hung out in the tent talking for a good bit.

Although the camping part was a lot of fun, we were ready to get away from the location and try something different so in the morning we packed everything up and headed out. One of the reasons we chose to meet in Indiana was to see the sand dunes and go to the beach. I brought my guitar, Stephen brought his Frisbee and Daniel brought his playfulness. We had a blast doing trick Frisbee throws, playing volleyball and just hanging out. It was fun to watch Daniel try to push Stephen around without any luck. He has a lot of heart though :-).

After checking out the beach, we explored the sand dunes there and decided it would be a great time to play some guitar and shoot some improv lyrics. Stephen's camera battery was low though and he didn't have a lot of memory left so it kept cutting off mid-song. We recorded more later at the hotel we stayed at and the song turned out to be really funny thanks to Stephen's quick wit. I think that was probably one of my favorite parts of the trip as Stephen is a fantastic entertainer and I like seeing him shine. Seeing Daniel push himself to get involved was really cool too because he isn't too fond of these type of things but he knew that we really are. Awww! Brotherly love! Isn't it great!

Some other highlights of the trip were singing in the car, the nice park ranger who recommended the hotel to us, going to see Transformers and going out for some delicious Mexican food. Mainly, it was just great to be around my bros!