Lake Geneva, Jack Johnson, and the great GPS fiasco

For a little getaway we took a trip to Lake Geneva last weekend. After dropping the girls off in Chicago at their grandparents’, we continued on to the French Country Inn, a quaint spot on Lake Como. I had originally tried to get a reservation a couple weeks ago, and there was nothing available. I then called back on Monday, and they had a small room available for Friday, but we’d have to switch to an even smaller room for Saturday night. We were totally fine with that, but I had a sneaking suspicion things were going to get even better. Debbie, our liaison from the Inn, called again on Tuesday and said “good news – you don’t have to switch rooms now!” to which I said, “At this rate, by Thursday we’ll be staying in the owner’s suite.” Like clockwork, Debbie called on Wednesday and said “the historic suite got a cancellation. Would you like it?” The historic suite is the best room at the Inn, and because my catchphrase is “nothing but the best for my lady”, we took it. It was a fantastic suite, and the accommodations were first rate. We ate dinner at the restaurant there and listened to a guy named Josh play guitar and sing all evening. The next morning, we ate and then headed into Lake Geneva for some shopping. There seems to be about 2-3 blocks of stores there, so we walked around, took some pictures, and shopped. Later in the day we went to a place called McIntyre’s Resort, on a different lake, and met up with this group:

The original reason for the trip was to go to Alpine Valley and see the Jack Johnson concert.

I have recently stepped into 2008 and purchased a Blackberry complete with GPS. Little did I know the GPS could be a bit less than reliable, and it seems to want to send you the shortest distance between to points rather than take advantage of interstates and 4-lane highways. It was all fun and games until I was leading a caravan of four vehicles en route to Alpine Valley and we ended up in a neighborhood about 10 miles away from our destination.

The show was great, and though we were far away I’m pretty sure it was Jack Johnson up there playing. It certainly sounded like him. Here is our view from the lawn:

He played a solid setlist with a good mix of songs from each of his albums. I was trying to think of songs I liked that he didn’t play, and I could only think of Rodeo Clowns and Mudfootball. He also played about 8 songs from his newest release, Sleep Through The Static, which I had bought just for the road trip, so that was cool.

After the show, we hung out in the lot for a couple hours, as leaving with 30,000 other people out of 2 exits takes a while. Again, the GPS system got everyone lost, and we ended up in a small town (well, I think everything around Lake Geneva is a small town) at 1AM. By this time, I don’t think anyone was still in the mood to jack around with GPS, so we went old school and pulled out the paper map.

We got back to the campsite at about 1:30AM, and three of us stayed up around the campfire until about 3:30, though I lost track of time with no watch and no phone. Jera had gone back to the French Country Inn in the car, as she required a bit more civilized accommodations than I. In fact, I spread out my sleeping bag and pillow on a picnic table and slept under the stars. Even though I’d left all my clothes, my air mattress inflator, and any sort of personal hygiene things back at the Inn, it was awesome!

The next morning – a couple hours later – I got up and realized I had no way back to the Inn. Everyone else was still sleeping, so I borrowed a car and started driving. My phone was dead, so GPS wasn’t an option. After about 30 minutes into what should have been a 15 minute trip, I hit the Illinois state line and realized things had gone horribly awry. So, I rummaged and found a map and eventually arrived after about an hour of driving.

The moral to the story is this – when driving around rural Wisconsin get yourself a good, non-electronic map, and keep it with you at all times.