the road less traveled

We took a road trip up to Wisconsin along with Chris' brother Kevan to spend a long weekend with some good friends on their lake to celebrate the Fourth. On the drive down with about another hour or two to go (total drive = 8 hours), it started to rain and were notified from our friends already there to "take cover" because a tornado had just hit. We laughed about it and blew it off....Until we got off the highway and noticed a ton of trees down. Power lines were destroyed and toppled over. Most of the way from there onto our final destination we had to off-road in the woods because huge trees were totally uprooted and all over the roads. (Good thing we had our new Tahoe - will post more pics soon). When we finally got to our cabin, we discovered all the power went out. The entire town and surrounding towns were totally wiped out. Cars and cabins had been totally wrecked. Two people died. Two little kids are still missing that were in the lake when the storm hit. We had no electricity or running water for the entire four days and four nights we were there (they are still on a power outage right now).
I had never been without electricity for more than a couple of hours. Even then, we still had running water. I had never been camping. I considered myself a city girl, a beach girl for that matter, and I honestly wasn't sure how I was going to rough it. I thanked God I decided to leave the cloth diapers at home and use disposables for the trip. I had no service but my phone died shortly after we got there. For 4 days and nights, we bathed, shaved, and brushed our teeth in the lake, manually filled up the toilet when we had to use the bathroom so we could flush, lit candles around the cabin to see where we were going at night, went to bed in the heat with no AC or fan. No phone. No internet. In the middle of the woods with the closest civilized town at least a half hour drive away. By the second day I wasn't sure I was going to last. By the end of the trip, I didn't want to leave.
Floating on the lake all day, playing with my smiling baby in the water, basking and falling asleep under the sun, going on boat rides, quality time & conversations with amazing people, seeing the stars at night, no make up, no blow dryer, no heels, barefoot in my bathing suit by day and bonfires by night....it was heaven.
Whenever I used to take my road trip from Indiana to Massachusetts and back for law school I used to always see these random little houses in the middle of nowhere. I would always point them out to whoever I was driving with and wonder who lived there. I would pick my brain wondering how anyone could live like that. Why anyone would want to live in the middle of the woods in the country with the closest store or civilization hours away.
Now? I get it.

on the drive up

crazy

Landon's lake buddy, Colin

And then my phone died.