At the end of the school year, I asked the kids what they were most excited to do together this past summer. And at the top of both their lists included our annual camping trip with the Guess family to Decorah. Every year in August, we make our way up to Pulpit Rock to rough it for a few days. We sleep in tents under the stars, cook most of our food over a campfire, and brush our teeth and take showers in the bathhouse. We do all the typical camping things - we roast marshmallows and stay up halfway through the night with stories, we kayak and hike and throw a fishing line in, and we snuggle up in our sleeping bags, waking up to stiff backs and the peaceful quiet of nature all around us.
But three years in, there are special and unique-to-us experiences that invite us back even more than the Pulpit Rock brews, the Sugar Bowl's Munchie Madness, or the fresh air that's sure to fill our lungs and keep us content for months to come. There's our beloved tent site right along the banks of the Upper Iowa River, where the water is always low enough to provide endless sandbar entertainment and get our kids extra dirty. Or Drew, extra extra dirty. There's the special dance party/band performance the kids start scheming up as the tents come down the year prior, where sand buckets become drums, headlamps become spotlights, and leftover Mabe's pizza becomes the perfect invitation to expand the spectator section. There's our yearly adventure to explore "the Cut", where Luther Alum, Nate, is always ready to show us a secret pocket of Decorah beauty while the rest of us just try to escape some sort of flesh-eating bacteria growing in the slippery moss at our toes. There's Beau's guitar music and delicious Dutch-oven eggs, and Kate's Dutch letter, donut hole breakfast celebration, always on my red plaid camp platter, always with ten eager hands ready to claim their handful of sugary goodness from Jaarsma, only after we sing to sweet Harper who is always happy to celebrate her birthday in Decorah. And as someone who gets the honor of sharing a birthday weekend with her, I'd say there are few things better than turning another year older around a picnic table at Pulpit Rock.
But this year, there were new treasures discovered and new memories made that may have made this year my favorite year yet. I kept saying that it felt like we were living in a 1950s summer classic movie. There was Cruz riding his old retro Huffy bike through the campground in his pjs, looking like he belonged straight out of a scene from the Sandlot, or at least a lot like a similar picture I have of his father on a similar bike when he was Cruz's age. There was water sliding on dirty butts down under that big limestone bridge at 'the cut,' brave kids sliding in with arms in the air as if they were on a roller coaster, and parents soon to follow suit. There were plenty of stick races, little sets of blue and brown eyes fixated on their sticks, and the twinkle in Drew's blue eyes as he held a small tree limb over his head and shouted "What about this one, guys?!" Drew in the wild has definitely brought us fits of joy since our weekend together.
But a memory that will likely make us smile for years down the road happened just before we were all ready to leave Sunday morning. Our last sets of dry clothes were on, and we had all but packed up before we decided to check out one last trail we had never hiked before. Unsure of how long or how high we would climb, we followed one after another all the way to the top of Twin Springs Trail before making our descent down. And at the bottom of the trail was a freshwater spring pool that feeds into the bigger streams Decorah is known for. We stuck our toes in, gasped at how cold the water was, and nonchalantly taunted the kids to jump in, not really thinking about actually doing it. That is, until Beau started taking his watch off and climbing right into the icy water. We all counted him down in suspense and cheered wildly when he popped out of the water screaming like a girl. And then one by one, we all jumped in. Not once, but twice and maybe even a third time.
One by one, we jumped in, screaming and laughing and feeling so full and free. And then leave it to Nate to initiate a game of Tag on a big patch of sunlit grass we had all to ourselves. The kids chased each other in their undies and we ran along with them, half attempting to dry our soaking wet jean shorts and half just running to stay in that moment together. And at the end of it all, it was easy to see why these were the adventures that rank at the top for our kids. We were together all weekend, our cell phones were dead, and we said yes to one more s'more, one more stick-boat race, and one more ice cold dip in our clothes.
Lots more pictures from Pulpit Rock...
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