As the week passed, three days of work and then two floating around trying to figure out my place in the world without a "job," I realized that I wanted to push myself a little more by adding a second (or possibly a third!) day on the road, just the three of us as Jose's birthday treat was to stay home on his own in peace. Lake Solano was a perfect choice--it was far enough to be challenging and new but close and flat enough to not be terribly daunting. They have a bike/hike site that is first-come-first-served so I decided to try our luck and hope that no one would deny a mama with two children on a bike. I still hadn't decided whether we would stay two nights at Lake Solano or just one but decided to just play it by ear and see how much we could all handle.
I decided on taking the Bullitt since we hadn't tried touring with it, yet. Also, it would be give us the freedom of riding while Big Brother was tired since we were heading out directly after school on Friday. It was hot that day, 95 degrees, so I was happy to just be going a shorter distance to the KOA and not pushing ourselves.
By dinner, we were pretty exhausted. The awesome thing about KOAs is that they are geared for families. Saturday night was s'mores night starting at 8pm. Big Brother was really excited to check it out but he was fast asleep by 7:45pm. Little Brother was a bit more difficult to get to bed and he crawled around the tent for another hour and a half before he curled up by my feet and knocked out. I was pleased to see that bringing the big 4-person tent had been the right choice. The little two-person one was too snug and caused a lot of kicking, smooshing, and general tension (both physical and emotional).
The boys ate and played with the camp-neighbor kids. It made me laugh when the little boy told me that they brought a lot of stuff but it was okay because they had two cars (this was for two adults and two children--two tents, a giant mosquito canopy, lawn chairs, an umbrella, coolers, bottled waters, and on and on and on and on). That, combined with the massive RVs that were all around us, made me think about how little one actually needs to get by. We had plenty of things we didn't "need" for this ride but took as a luxury. These folks around us had more space so they brought more. I wonder how much of their stuff was what they really "needed."
"Money in my mouth!"
"Where is it?"
"I dunno."
"Is it in your tummy?"
"No."
"Did you drink/gulp/swallow it?"
"No."
"Is it here (pointing to his stomach)?"
"No."
"Did you eat it?"
"....Mmmhmmm."
"Did you eat it?"
"Yes!"
A call to Kaiser and the fear that it could have been something other than a coin, like a button battery, prompted the decision to take him to the ER. Since I didn't see what he had eaten but he was pretty sure that he had eaten something, that was my best decision. The problem was that we didn't have a carseat and the closest Kaiser was in Vacaville and it was 10 pm.
I decided to call Jose since he has my parents' car. I didn't know if Little Brother had really eaten anything at all and since he didn't have any emergency symptoms, an ambulance ride didn't seem warranted. We could have called a taxi, if we hadn't had access to the car but it was just simpler to have Jose come out. Not that I think we need to keep a car around for emergencies but I will admit that when you need it, it's convenient to have one available. I also want to point out that we also have many friends who would be willing to pitch in in an emergency. It's pretty nice to have a community to rely on and not feel like we have to figure out everything on our own.
Two hours later, this is what we learn:
Jose dropped me back off in Dixon so I could slip into the house before Big Brother woke up and Little Brother went back home to Sac so he could sleep in and have easier access to diapers (which at some point should have some change...).
After our rest, we took on a spare passenger so the boys could read Where's Waldo together, cracking up the whole way.
The boys had a great time catching up again and there's been no "change" in Little Brother's bowels, yet. They both fell asleep without much issue, all before 7 pm. Tomorrow might be a difficult day to get back into our weekly routine but this adventure was totally worth it (ER visit and all...)! This route goes in my favorites book for kid-friendly trips.