Day 8
June 24 (Lewis and Clark State Park, IO)
I woke up excited because today was my last AP Summer Institute class. I worked hard through these past few days and have completed all required work before the end of this session. I submitted my project so I could receive credit hours (3.00) for the course. Masters+60: here I come! My excitement for the day was hampered, however by the SCOTUS announcement regarding Roe v Wade. It was hard thinking about anything that didn't eventually make its way back to the implications of this ruling - I felt pretty discouraged, I know Cassandra did too, and that feeling followed us through the rest of the trip.
While in class, Cassandra and the crew ride bikes to the Lewis and Clark Visitor Center,
It's pretty murky in the water, as they were dredging along the southern portion of the lake, and I had no interest in going in there. The kids got up to their knees and felt refreshment from the heat. Cassandra learned that this and many similar-sized lakes across the region would dry up without being routinely dredged due to erosion. That made me pause to reflect on the preciousness of these spaces while they are available and the actions we take to preserve the places deemed worthy.
After my APSI obligations were complete, we celebrated by doing our first round of laundry! We went to Dirty 2 Pretty Laundry on the main street of Onawa (coincidentally similar to Ottawa…), which was a wide, low, quiet town. Inside the unattended store, a man was watching a Burt Reynolds movie. The kids chuckled at it a few times, helped me turn money into quarters in the machine (they loved the concept!), then took seats at the child-sized table to work on the Junior Ranger packets they received from the Visitor Center earlier. Fortunately, Ev and Til were so engrossed in their learning activities that they didn't notice when he changed the broadcast to Law and Order: SVU. He eventually headed to the back to fold his clothes out of the dryer, and I put on SpongeBob in his absence as a safeguard.
After putting clothes in the dryer, we went for a walk down main street, and came upon Back Closet Consignment and popped in to check out their children's clothing selection. We found a much needed "bathing dress" for Evelyn for showering and changing in campground showers. It was a serendipitous excursion, and Evelyn seemed so proud and confident in herself; she was so pumped independently find and try-on clothing! It took us a few hours to finish laundry, which gave Cassandra some well-needed and deserved alone time - she'd been flying solo these past four days during AP Institute.
We returned triumphant and renewed. We stumbled upon an old-school playground spinner and couldn't resist giving the children a sense of what we used to play on back-in-the-day.
I celebrated my newfound freedom by doing exactly what should be done on this trip: relaxing and having fun with my crew. We rode bikes, went for a short hike around the campground, and played frisbee in the perfect space behind our campsite.
It felt like my trip was beginning again, and we were just turning the corner for some really fun stuff...
After dinner, we packed up the campsite well so that we could take our time in the morning but also get on the road early for a leisurely ride into the Badlands tomorrow.
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