1,200 Miles Later - Back in MN

Do you ever try to plan your life out?  Yeah we do too.  Back in May we felt pretty awesome that we had booked parks all way up to the first week in July....and we wouldn't have to stress about where we would be staying.  Our plan was to stay on the east coast, then make our way to Asheville for a few weeks before we would end up in Nashville for our Beachbody Summit the end of July.  

Well...in comes a curveball. We found out Laura's entire family was coming to Minnesota for the 4th of July.  Hearing this, we laid out the pros and cons of making the trip back or sticking to our original plan.  If the title of the blog didn't give it away, we chose to head back to MN.  All those plans we had, were now up in smoke :)  Instead of heading to Asheville, we went to  New Jersey for a couple weeks to explore NYC and that area!!  

Our first stop on our way back to Minnesota was Hershey, PA.  Since we love chocolate as much as we do, this was a no brainer.  Although Hershey doesn't exactly make healthy chocolate, we still wanted to check it out.  Eli's favorite part was the singing cows on the ride that we went on. So that made it all worth it.  We also indulged in a few chocolate treats.  

We left Hershey on a Saturday and since most parks are either full or make you pay a premium for a weekend rate, we opted to stay at a Walmart outside of Cleveland.  We don't mind doing this as long as it's a quick stay.  On our way through Pennsylvania I made Laura a little nervous since we ended up on a bit of a detour due to construction and weight restrictions on the road we were supposed to go on.   The roads were a little narrow, a little curvy, and a little hilly.  We took it slow and made it through unscathed, other than upsetting a few locals that got stuck behind me.  

After our Walmart stay we got on the road fairly early, which was a blessing and a curse.  Our plan was to stay on the east side of Chicago since that would have only been about a 4-5 hour drive from where we were but we didn't factor in the time change and also the difference of driving through Chicago on a Sunday vs Monday.  The blessing was we opted to push through the to the North side of Chicago but the curse was that meant spending almost 9 hours traveling that day.  Which gets to be A LOT with a toddler.  

​This made our drive the next day super easy though, only about 2 hours to Wisconsin Dells where we stayed for a couple nights.  Of course we chose the two coldest days of the summer to be in the Dells, so that meant no waterparks.  We did have a nice pool and splash pad at our campground so Eli was able to spend some time in the water.  I was even able to sneak in a round of golf one morning since it was only 55 degrees when we woke up.  Great golf weather, poor pool weather.  

Before heading out, we made our way to a train museum to indulge Eli's new fascination with choo-choo's.  They had a legit coal powered mini-train that we could ride on.  Eli loved it, even thought at times it got kind of loud.  We also got him his first choo-choo set which he still loves!  After that we made our final push to get back to Minnesota.  

Our first couple of nights back in Minnesota we spent at Baker Park, just west of Minneapolis. When we make it back to MN from now on, this will definitely be a home base for us.  It's a great park, tons of room and nice playgrounds.  We even had some visitors one night for dinner.  We miss our friends and family and seeing them made our 1,200 mile journey home SO worth it!  

After a couple nights at Baker Park we moved to Laura's brother's empty lot which was conveniently located right on Lake Minnetonka.  We were pretty spoiled!  We parked on his lot for 5 days over the 4th.  Definitely one of the best views we've had in our RV adventures so far.  

It was also super fun to get to be "RVing" with Laura's sister, Sara and family again.  They parked right behind us on the lot.  Over the weekend we spent time on the boat, swimming in the lake, eating delicious food, but most importantly spending time with family.  It was fabulous!!!

Look for a blog post in the next couple weeks where we can catch you up on the rest of our adventures in Minnesota, along with our travels down to Nashville for our Beachbody Coach Summit.