Back from a season, or rather, a weekend in hell......

Good morning friends,

I am back in the bad place after a weekend in what may possibly have been a worse place. I travelled into the Wisconsin Dells with my wife, my cousin, his wife and there two sons. At first I was hopeful as the location we stayed at was quite wooded and smelled of fire which I like, sadly this is where the pleasure ends. We stayed in a smal trailer camper which was small and had even smaller beds made up of folding furniture which were horribly uncomfortable. The bathing site was made up of a couple of coin-op showers in the public restroom in the campground which isn't so bad I guess except for the fact that the restrooms themselves were covered in a couple inches of dirty water - and I don't even want to guess at what sort of dirty we're talking about. We drove all evening to get there and I am not fond of being a passenger in a car for more than a couple hours at a time and then upon reaching said destination we pretty much went right to bed in a very cold - no fire, no furnace and worst of all, no drinks evening. Next day we went to the actual Dells - the tourist trap area. I enjoyed myself in the morning simply becasue it was a very bright and crisp morning but the actual area of the Dells is much the same as the Canadian side of Niagra Falls, lots of touristy stuff that is profanely expensive for what it is - half rate ammusements. I did get to enjoy some very expensive salt-water taffy which is one of my biggest guilty pleasures. By the way, have any of you noticed that you can find a taffy apple just about anywhere but candy apples are simply no longer to be found? Does this mean we will no longer be seeing candy-apple red cars? Anyways, we eventually returned to the campsite and relaxed a bit and my wife made an insanely good batch of beef stew in a dutch oven sort of a thing right in the fire, however, the evening was made somewhat ugly by the fact that my cousin (who really is a fine and decent fellow) seemed to have it in for the youngest of his sons who he proceeded to deride and humiliate through the evening. Now as a self proclaimed curmudgeon, I rarely have a problem with people dishing out a little abuse, especially when well timed and comedic, however, (and don't start getting the idea that I have a heart or anything) killing the spirit of a young child is just downright criminal, it's like plucking the wings off a bird ever so slowly. Anyway, I suppose I could really get into the finer details of what made the trip hellish but I'll leave that to your imagination, suffice it to say that although I don't want to rail too much on it because the trip was a kind offer and I did have some fun, I do think that I will need to follow up on the actual Dells and other places of it's ilk at a later date.
Talk to you later.