Day 13: Themed Parties, Campfires & Route 66 Dreams

This morning starts with another favorite Rebecca memory...and this one involves themed parties! From prom parties to "White Out" parties, she always knew how to throw an unforgettable celebration. I even share the story of the infamous night we "shot the rainbow"—a decision that seemed like a fantastic idea at the time and a terrible one the next morning! 😂

Then I take you camping with me to Van Buren State Park. My husband and I hadn't been there in over a decade, and I was blown away by the transformation. What was once mostly stone campsites has become one of the prettiest campgrounds I've visited, complete with paved roads, beautiful grass, mature trees, and concrete patio pads at every campsite. It's definitely earned a spot on my "I'll be back" list.

Finally, I share a dream that's been growing in my mind ever since falling down the Route 66 rabbit hole. What if someone sponsored the podcast so I could take 10 Unedited Minutes of Marlena's Time on the road? Imagine following historic Route 66, meeting incredible people, discovering hidden gems, and sharing the adventure one unedited episode at a time.

Sometimes the best adventures begin with a simple idea...and maybe this is one of them.

Transcript

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Good morning everyone. Welcome to another edition of 10 Unedited Minutes with Marlena. It is Monday, July 6th, and it's a Monday. I hope you all had a good weekend. I sure did. We'll get into that in a little bit. But first, I would like to tell you that this podcast is sponsored by my very dear friend Rebecca Conklin Kleibomer. Rebecca agreed to sponsor two months worth of my episodes. And she did so because, of course, she loves me. She uh um supports the work that I'm doing, and she thinks I'm doing a great job. So if you want to support this podcast or sponsor this podcast, you can, you can, um, either as an individual, a small business. I think it'd be really cool to get a small business to sponsor my podcast. Um, and it's it's just a minimal investment each month, basically just to cover my subscription to BuzzSprout, which is the platform that I use to push this podcast out to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and all the other uh podcast stream service, streaming services out there. I also record my podcast for YouTube. So if you want to see me in the flesh, you can go to my YouTube channel and watch it there. But to honor Rebecca's sponsorship, I have decided that we are going to dedicate uh 60 episodes of this podcast to Rebecca, and we're going to do that by starting each episode with a memory I have of Rebecca and I's friendship. And um Rebecca and I have been friends for a very long time. Um today's memory is about Rebecca throwing a party. And anybody who knows Rebecca knows that her biggest strength is her party planning, right? So I'm trying to remember which one this was, but um just for context, uh Rebecca lives about an hour away from me, and she's always been so gracious to say, hey, you can stay in our guest room after the party if you you know want to have a few drinks and don't want to drive home. So she had a it was I I I can't honestly, Rebecca, I don't remember which one it was, but you had a prom party and it was so cool because um everybody dressed up like they were going to the prom and um you threw this amazing party and just the themes that you do, and then you had a white out party where we all wore white, and I think that was to honor um your husband um something that he did in the uh military, I think. But anyway, at one of these parties, I just remember that your husband and my husband, and I believe it was your brother, uh, we all decided that we were going to shoot the rainbow. And um for those of you that don't know what shooting the rainbow is, um, it's a drinking game where you I'm sorry, this just cracks me up, where you shoot uh the color of the rainbow. And I don't remember how many shots we had, but I just remember that um that next day was really, really rough, and that drive home was really, really rough. So um, Rebecca, I love your parties. I love how you theme each party, and you're just so good at it and so creative with it, and I just I just love it. But anyway, thank you, Rebecca, for sponsoring this podcast. Thank you for being an amazing friend to me. I love you dearly. Love you, love you dearly. And what are we gonna get into today? Let's talk about my weekend. So this past weekend we went camping, and by camping, um, I mean we have a travel trailer that we uh use. And it was the 4th of July. And for those of you who camp know that it is the the state parks in Ohio have been sold out since February 1st, right? You can reserve them six months in advance, and there was no way you were gonna get a campsite anywhere in any state park over the weekend of the 4th of July. Well, guess what? I got lucky, and I just last week, like every few days, I'd periodically surf the uh State Park Reservations website, and it was supposed to be rainy and hot and stormy this weekend, so people were canceling their their um camping trips left and right. So my parents um had made reservations to go to Van Buren State Park. Van Buren State Park is just north of Finley, and it's literally less than 30 minutes away for us because it's just right down 75 or up 75. And so last week, one day, I think it was Monday or Tuesday, I went onto the website and I started looking around in like Indian Lake, which is our favorite, it's our go-to state park. Had a few campsites available from people canceling, and then um I decided to just peek at Van Buren State Park because I knew they were full, and they had one campsite left. And maybe I told this story on Friday, I don't remember, but um so I texted my mom and I'm like, hey, what what site are you staying on? And she said, I don't remember 38. Why? And I said, Because I'm booking 37 right now. It was literally the site right beside them. How it was a divine intervention, I think. A total divine intervention. So we went and we had a good time. Um, it was just very laid back and relaxed. It was just me and my mom and dad, me and my husband and my mom and dad. And yeah, it did rain, but um nothing crazy, but you're awning up, go inside the camper and go to bed because it was in the evening every night. But what I want to say about this um this trip was how impressed I was with Van Buren State Park. So it's probably been 10 years now since my husband and I drove, we drove up there one day just to check it out because we've been campers for a long time. Um, and we just wanted to see what it was like because it was close. And the last time we drove up there, I'm not kidding you, it was like dirt and stone campsites with I don't even think they had electricity to each campsite. I think they just had a water spigot. I don't even know. But we pulled in this uh state park Friday, and I literally went, wow, how much has it changed? It is now beautiful, it's landscaped, it's got thick, thick grass. Each campsite is paved with a concrete pad for your picnic table. Each campsite has uh electricity, um, all the 30, 50 amp, whatever you need for your camper, and it has uh direct water hookup. The only thing they don't have is sewer, but still you can dump on the way out. But it it was beautiful, beautiful, and there were a lot of people um camping there. It was full. I took the last site, but the the funny story, my husband likes to fish. And um, before we left, I said, make sure you take your fishing pole because there's um a nice lake there to fish in. He's like, Okay. So Friday we had to, I needed contact solutions. So Friday evening I said, we need to go out and find a Dollar General or Walmart or whatever so I can get contact solutions. So we did, and of course it was storming and it was just finishing up, and we saw the most beautiful rainbow on our way back to the campgrounds. Beautiful. It was like the full arch of a rainbow. But anyway, he's like, hey, I want to go check out that lake. And I said, Okay. So we saw a sign where it said boat dock this way. So we drove down that road. We didn't see a lake anywhere. We kind of like drove right out of the state park. I pulled our GPS back up and I said, Oh my god, we're like two miles away from the state park now. So we kind of did a loop and um meandered our way back to the where the lake was, and it just looked like the ground was dried up, it looked like m a marsh or wetland or something. And I'm like, is that the lake? So I Googled, is Van Buren Lake dried up? And guess what? Last year they took on this big project to pull out this 85-year-old dam that wasn't it was getting old and dilapidated, and they drained the lake. And it said they did it because it was only a foot to two feet deep all the way across because of all the sludge in the bottom, and you couldn't boat in it anymore, or it wasn't good for anything. So they drained it and returned that reservoir back to its natural habitat, which had a nice stream running through it. But my husband's like, What? So we go back to the campgrounds, and mom and dad, they didn't know about it either. My dad brought worms and fishing poles, they didn't know that they drained Van Buren Lake either. So if you guys are going to um Van Buren State Park, don't expect to fish because that lake is now gone. But anyway, if you just want a nice, low-key, relaxing weekend where you literally can just sit down and read a book and relax, that's the state park for you. It's truly beautiful. I will warn you though, it does not have uh facilities. It has vault toilets, which are like pits, it doesn't have showers, so you have to have your own bathroom and shower in your camper, or if you don't care that you don't shower all weekend, like a true camper, then that's fine too. But anyway, we had a good weekend. It was relaxing, just what the doctor ordered, and um yeah, it was nice. So you guys need to tell me what what do you do for your weekend? I I I feel like I reflected on this podcast over the weekend, and I need some feedback, right? I just feel like I'm talking into this microphone, and that I guess that's what hard that's what's hard about um doing a podcast is when you do a TikTok, you know, people can just throw comments right there right away. But when you do a podcast, it's hard for people to to um reply and interact with you. So I need some interaction, guys. I need some interaction. So you can, I'm sure you can comment on my YouTube video. I always plug this podcast with my Facebook page, listen to it, come back to me and leave me a comment or send me a message. I actually uh was talking to my mom this weekend and she told me about how one of her friends did this Route 66 highway trip. And it sounds really, really cool. So I'm kind of daydreaming here a little bit, but I think it'd be cool to take that trip and maybe do this podcast on the road and um maybe interview some really cool small businesses along the way just to kind of, you know, tell you guys what the trip is about and you know, bring some, I don't want to say awareness, but um uh I can't think of my words, but anyway, wouldn't it be cool to get a sponsor to sponsor that whole trip for me and say, all right, like like a traveling company or somebody who wants to promote it. But I think it'd be cool to promote the small businesses along the way and um just tell you guys what's out there. So I love to travel, I love to do that type of thing. But anyway, that's all for today. Thank you guys for supporting this podcast. Thank you, Rebecca, for sponsoring this podcast and being just a sweet, amazing, awesome friend to me. And um yeah, I love you guys. Pray for me. I pray for you every day, and we'll see you tomorrow. Bye.