Mothers Day - Preamble to the Great Adventure

Time to catch everyone up on the greatest Frericks adventure yet!

Starting Friday evening May 9th we started a 17-day vacation adventure, longer than we can ever remember before.
The beginning of this adventure was a weekend boon docking only a short distance from home at St. Francis Hills on the north side of Quincy.
Since before Ken and I met, probably almost 30 years now, the Frericks family has reserved this boy scout camp for Mother’s Day weekend.
Trevor had arrived home earlier in the week and helped Ken prepare the RV for our adventure. Friday afternoon, Ken headed out with Baby to meet brother Alan and his wife Nancy at the Hills to begin setting up for the weekend of family camping.



I pulled in with the Audi in time to catch Alan and Ken in final set up. We’ve had so much rain that they were being really careful about where they were driving and parking on the soft gound.

Sadly, Jean Frericks’ brother had been shot in a turkey hunting accident and so Michael and Jean were tied up with funeral functions and couldn’t join us around the campfire Friday evening. They, along with their daughter, Jackie, her husband, Mike, and kids Cole and Molly joined us on Saturday afternoon when Michael pulled his fifth wheel up. As it turned out, Jackie and family stayed in the fifth wheel for the night Saturday night.

Here’s Cole making fast friends with Alan and Nancy’s furkid, Stevie.

Molly, our youngest camper, was her usual bubbly, lovable self. It’s little wonder in every picture we have of Molly this year that she’s a little blur of constant motion!

Saturday night was interesting since we had a storm go through with 50 mph winds. Actually Baby didn’t rock one bit from the wind but it was hard to sleep with the wind pummeling the roof constantly with the whirligig seed pods from the maples overhead. I got up early Sunday to go in town and exercise, shower and pick up Trevor who spent the evening back in town with friends. There were quite a few downed tree branches to dodge on the drive back in to town.

I had no more than finished my shower when Ken called to say that they needed Trev and me back at the Hills because Ditka had given Cole and Molly the slip on their morning walk.. When Trev and I got back to the Hills, the escapee had been on the run for a couple of hours and the search team was worn down. Cole was really upset by it. The big fear was that since Ditka was dragging his he would get himself stuck in the woods and we wouldn’t be able to find him. While Trev, Mike and Cole continued the hunt, the rest of us broke to prepare for Mother’s Day lunch.

Then, lo and behold, Kay and Roger pull in, and call out from the car, ‘Somebody up here lose a dog’! As it turns out, they came upon Ditka trotting alongside the road and thought the dog looked familiar. When Roger yelled to him and opened the back car door, Ditka jumped right in. Kay quickly rescued a couple of pies she had in the back seat, and Ditka road back to the Hills with them as if that had been his plan all along.

It was an ugly blustery Mother’s Day so they guys put up some tarps to insure that Grandma Frericks had a comfortable place out of the wind.

I was able to get a few decent shots of grandma…


With Trevor and Dad (Grandma’s eye is still showing bruising from some minor surgery last week).

Mom and boys…


Mom and Frericks kids…Ann, Lois, Mary, David, Alan, Michael, Kay and Kenny. The oldest, Carlene, and youngest, Jane, were not able to attend.

Mid-afternoon, Ken, Trev and I packed up Baby, and headed back to town. We stopped by the car wash to rinse away the remnants of maple trees left on the motorhome and then parked it in front of the house for the night to finish final packing, fill with water, and hook up the jeep.

Stay tuned for Day 1 for the Great Frerx Black Hills Adventure!

Hugs, C