Green Bay in 1994

The summer after my divorce was final, I packed the kids, the tent and too much food into my Honda Civic and headed to Green Bay. Nick was eight and a half and Val was just four. And actually the kids both remember this trip, so I was finally doing something right.

We camped at the Cedar Valley Campground in Kewaunee, about a half hour due east of Green Bay. The first night we were the only ones out in the field in our tent. The other campers, in campers, were parked in the trees where they had electricity and water. We, however, were roughing it. No, not really, since the campground had a swimming pool we splashed in every night.

Our first full day of vacation, we played at Bay Beach Amusement Park. The Park is an old-fashioned family-centered spot, which charged no admission and the rides were all amazingly cheap – between ten and thirty cents each. Sure the rides were pretty basic, but what kid still does not just love the Ferris Wheel, Merry-Go-Round, and Tilt-A-Whirl. The only disappointment was the giant slide. Nick was too short to ride it alone and Val was too small to ride it at all.

The second day we visited the National Railroad Museum. Nick, if I remember right, thought that it was absolutely awesome. I believe he was still in that fireman-railroad worker-helicopter pilot phase. His glory was finding the MT&W locomotive which had come straight out of our home town paper mill. Built in 1938, it served the Tomahawk mill for years before coming to the railroad museum in 1973.

When we got back to the campground that afternoon, we thought we finally had neighbors. Until I realized it was our tent that had rolled three or four campsites over. Thinking that the inside would air out, I had pulled up the stakes that morning. During the day, the wind had taken it for a little walk. We retrieved it before anyone came along and staked it down.