Last Group Camping/Beach Trip

This past weekend, I went camping with some of my wonderful friends. Sadly this is like the first and last time we'll do that this summer, but atleast we got to do it once. Anyway, so this time we went to Pokagon State Park in Indiana. It's somewhat big. They have this really annoying rule about only allowing one "mode of transportation" per camp site, which I didn't really like. What else bugged me... Oh yeah... Indiana people... so based on my rather narrow perspective of Caucasian Indianians, I think that they are rather racists if I may say so. Well for one, this one girl saw Julia in a van as we were driving in and felt compelled to tell her mother, "Look Mommy! There are Chinese people here!" Wow. Then when I started to set up my family's tent, a lady tried to drive past the campsite, but several of us were standing in the road. When she stopped the car, she immediately started to roll down her windows, while at the same time, instantly started to say something to the people on the road. No one heard her, however, so no one responded to her. In response, she decided that all people with yellow skin must not be able to understand English (even though we probably all knew English better than her). So she took it upon herself to say to the people on the road, "No speak English?" Wow. Seriously, what is wrong with these people? What happened to racial diversity?
Anyway, so after those two episodes of racism, we progress to night/dinner. There were lots of mosquitoes and I got bit around my ankles so much. We, "teenagers", got put into a table at one of the other campsites since there weren't enough at the main eating/gathering site. After that dinner, we talked for a while and then went and made s'mores. Haha, so many weird/funny pictures from that. We also watched the opening ceremony on NBC for quite a while. Overall, the first night was pretty usual. It got kind of cold at night though, but it felt really good inside the warm sleeping bag.

The next morning, woke up really earliy (like 7 am) and sat outside because I was scared that I would wake up everyone else in the tent. Then at about 7:30 Julia came out and we went for a walk. After finally getting to the beach, which was kind of disgusting because there was a bunch of aquatic plants that washed up, we walked around at first and then tried to take pictures that didn't turn out so well. After walking around, we went swinging at the playground beside the beach, but the ground was full of mulch, which jabbed into my feet. Boo :-( On the other note, I beat Julia swinging :-D haha. We went back for breakfast at about 10, which was ok I think? I don't really remember what I had for breakfast that morning, lol. I think I had like a banana and a blueberry muffin. Then for not-quite-enough-food-to-call-a-brunch snack I had a bunch of grapes while the late risers had ramen, lol. After sitting around for a while, we finally decided to go on a walk. A walk that took like 3 hours. First we went on this bike trail, but then found out that it wasn't that long. Then we had to wait for our parents to meet us at this Saddle Barn where there were some horses. After meeting our parents for some random reason, we continued on our walk, before getting confused by the map and then getting lost. When we finally got onto the trail that we were trying to find, Michelle decided that she didn't want to go on the walk anymore, which was kind of weird. So she and Yifei went back before us. we passed this nature reserve that had pretty flowers, but scary looking water/pond. We also saw this really high point called Hell's Point and we stopped there to take pictures. After walking past Hell's Point, we all got tired and started taking the shortcut back to the campsite. So got back to camp and had a small lunch? Maybe had a small lunch, I don't really remember. Going on, we were all kind of tired, but we went to the beach again (different from the one in the morning). Sadly, when we got there, the water was a little cold and it started to drizzle. After a few minutes, it luckily stopped. The water was still cold, so Julia and I just took a na, while the Marie, Angela, Alice, Yifei and Michelle did something else? Napping kind of prevents you from being aware of what other people are doing. After I woke up, I went into the water a little, but then Lessie started scaring these two girls who were playing with her earlier, so I tried to distract her, but she got a little mad :-( oh well. For dinner, we went out to this Chinese buffet place. Well most of us anyway, all the little kids didn't go, all the older kids did. I went with Yifei's dad, and I got to play around with their GPS system. Now I really really want a GPS system :-D expensive birthday present anyone? After dinner, we sat around the fire/showered and then went out to watch the meteor shower. That was quite interesting... We played a game called "psychologist" which was relaly funny. Thanks for playing the game Angela, lol. Haha, we were so loud In all we saw three shooting stars, well, Marie claims to have seen three, but I only saw the last one. I wonder why...? lol After we got back, all of went to sleep immediately. So that leads us to the last day.

The morning woke up early again (like 7:30ish). Ate breakfast and then spent most of the morning packing and other generally boring things. In the afternoon though, Indiana Dunes! That was so much fun, well, getting there was a little confusing, lol. After we actually got to the state park for the second time (the first time, the beach was closed so we decided to go to the national one, but then remembered that no one remember the way to the national one, so we went back to the state park), we ate lunch and then went to the beach. The wind was really strong so the waves were huge! The rip current was pretty strong, but the waves were huge! It was so much fun. The water was so strong and lots of fun. I definitely swallowed water several times. Without a doubt, so much water went through my nose. Ah! Huge Waves! So much fun. I don't think that I've ever been in waves that large. I had to keep on swimming because the current kept pushing me away from where we put our stuff, but it was so hard because the currents was so strong. At first when you went into the water, the water was so freezing cold, but after a few minutes it go a lot better. After thirty minutes or so though, you started to feel really cold again :-( It got so bad, Julia's lips were blue the second tme we went in. Sadly, we didn't have time to climb the sand dunes and Angela and Alice weren't allowed into the water. For dinner, we went to this Chinese restaurant close to the park. I'm pretty sure that we went at peak hour, which was a bad idea because they only had one waiter there that day and we had a group of nine :-S At first we wanted to be seated together, then we thought that we'd be seated faster if we sat apart, but then we ended up getting seated together again, it was all a confusing matter. Dinner was ok. Several of the dishes were a little spicy. The drive home was a mix. At first we all had some energy left over and so we were all talking, but then by 11, everyone was tired, and I definitely atleast dozed off if not feel asleep completely. That basically sums up the trip. It was so much fun, especially at the dunes. Too bad this was the first and last time we're going to go camping this year :-(