Flash BACK Friday Stop 6: Chicago

Our stop in Chicago had a few firsts for us as campers and as tourists. I had never been to Chicago before and as campers we had never "boondocked" (a.k.a dry camping, camping without hookups) before.

When I started researching where we could camp in Chicago, I could not find one single place that was within an hours distance of the city, which I suppose makes sense since it's a city and there wouldn't be much camping within city limits, but we didn't want to be that far away from Chicago since we were only planning to camp one night and didn't want to spend to much time driving back and forth from the campground.

We found out from another blogger that we could camp in a parking lot right in the heart of the city. We ended up camping in the parking lot of the McCormick Place which was withing walking or biking distance to everything we wanted to see on our whirlwind tour of the city. We were there at the end of July/beginning of August and it was pretty windy - guess that's why it really is called the windy city. The parking lot was a great location and served the purpose for us - I'm not sure if we could have used our generator, probably could have, but luckily it wasn't 100 degrees and we did manage to sleep thru the night.

Since it was our first trip there we didn't know how far things were from each other and probably ended up taking taxis a bit more than we needed to but we had our four year old and our fluffy dog with us so we couldn't ask to much of them to hike all over the city.

The night before I had researched what kind of tour we could take that would allow pets, again "dry camping" we would not have any hookups/no electricity and certainly couldn't leave our dog in the camper sweating to death. So by luck I found two tour companies both offering architectural tours by boat up the Chicago River. We chose the Seadog Tour because it offered more tour times and we weren't sure what time we would actually get there and I'm so happy we did. It was great and the service was awesome. They treated Zico (our dog) better than anyone on the tour (almost) and gave us a discount because we brought a dog. It was so much fun and so nice to be able to do something all of us together. The architecture is really cool in Chicago and it was so nice to see the city and learn as much as we could from the tour during the one day we were in town.

After the tour we walked around the Navy Pier for a bit, had dinner, headed over to the Bean and the Fountain of Faces and then made our way back  to the camper. It was a fun filled - full day in Chicago and I highly recommend this way to camp in Chicago. It cost us $35.00 for that one night but it was well worth it.

It was fun exploring a new place and surviving our first night of boondocking. :) On to the next adventure.

Flash BACK Friday: Stop 5: Indiana

So we're back home! Have been here for a few weeks now. Our trip was awesome and went by fast and unfortunately there was no way we could keep up with our Blog while we were actually living it. So we're going to start a series of blog posts called FLASH BACK FRIDAY where we'll recap a stop on the trip every Friday. That should work. :)

Our stop in Indiana (Stop 5) was at a campground right off the highway, called: Caboose Lake Campground in Remington, IN

It was right off the highway as I mentioned which was great since we were just stopping for the night, so it was easy to get to and get back on the road the next day. It was a very friendly campground the people that worked there and the campers were all very nice. It had a great playground and it seems for just the summer time it had a lot of water games, bounce house, etc set up that even locals could come to for the day - almost like an amusement park. You could also swim in part of the lake there.

My only complaint if I was to leave one which is not necessarily the fault of the campground it's just their location and you could hear the traffic on the highway pretty much all night. So it was great that it was by the highway for easy in and out and getting back on the road but the traffic was a little noisy. If in the area again and on this kind of trip I would definitely stay here again though.

Here are some  pictures, very few, from our stay at the Caboose Lake Campground.

Stay tuned for our next stop and some local camping in the future. :)

Stop 4: Bardstown, KY

Since we left Stone Mountain, GA our plan was to head to Wisconsin to visit family. So we researched what would be good stops along the way. We are big fans of the blog Gone with the Wynns and after reading their post on Bardstown, KY and seeing that it was on our route we couldn't help but check it out ourselves.

Bardstown has been one of our favorite stops so far for so many reasons. It's a cute, friendly small town that just happens to be on the Bourbon Trail.

We stayed at one of our first state park campgrounds on this stop and loved it. It had full hookups and was located right next to a golf course. It was very well maintained, clean bathrooms, a small playground and was very peaceful.

We stayed here two nights and had such a good time. We would love to come back here again sometime. 

We of course had to check out a few stops on the Bourbon Trail. We visited Maker's Mark and did the tour and also visited Jim Beam but just walked around and had lunch, no tour. 

as part of the tour you will walk thru a barrel room that houses Chihuly's "The Spirit of the Maker" installation which was created in celebration of Maker's Mark's 60th Anniversary. It was awesome!

After Maker's Mark we headed over to Jim Beam. We were going to do a tour there as well but we would have had to wait a while for it and it was lunch time and we had Liam with us so we didn't want to press our luck. We walked around part of the grounds, the gift shop and ate at Fred's Smokehouse. 

After checking out Jim Beam we headed over to a real gem of the area the Bernheim Arboretum and Research Forest, this place is amazing and I think we just scratched the surface there. We mostly focused on the playground they had but we did check the canopy walk which was incredible. 

Here's a few more pictures from our campsite, we really loved it and would love to go back some day. 

We hope you have enjoyed this blog post and have inspired you to visit Bardstown, KY sometime and hop on the Bourbon Trail. 

Stop 3: Nashville, TN

Our third stop, also for only one night, was Nashville, TN (Music City). We have visited Nashville once before and really liked the city. We came here to scout out some campsites for a trip back to Music City in a few months.

This was our first KOA campground that we stayed at, it's nice. It offers a lot of activities especially for kids and this location in particular is great if you're interested in being close to the Grand Ole Opry and some great shopping.

Here are some pictures from our Nashville stop:

Stop 2: Chattanooga, TN

This stop was basically just to get us back out on the road and do some laundry. We stopped for one night at a campground called Best Holiday Trav-L-Park. 

The unique thing about this campground is it's located on a Civil War battlefield which served as a skirmish site in 1863 preceding the Battle of Chickamauga. 

Here are a few pictures from this stop:

Stop 1: Stone Mountain, GA

Our course our first stop had to be to the Atlanta area so we could see our good friends (the peeps) before we embarked on our journey around the country.

We camped for three nights/four days at the Stone Mountain Park Campground.

Highlights from this trip were the Laser show and spending an awesome day with our friends. 

Here are a few pictures from this stop: