Tag Archive for: tent camping

Confessions of a Retired Queen of Camping

/in /by

Every vacation my family took was a camping trip of some sort–first to Yosemite when I was small and as a teen, every summer to Bass Lake where we tent camped for two weeks. Glorious long days swimming, boating and water skiing and making lot of new friends. (Even had a couple of summer romances.)

After I married and we had our kids, tent camping was all we could afford. I was a champion fire starter and was a great outdoor cook. When my girls became Camp Fire Girls, of course we camped everywhere–at the beach (cooked a turkey in a deep pit in the sand and it actually turned out wonderful), and every nearby campground. When the girls became high-schoolers, we back-packed into a remote area. (I’m good at research, talked to some Boy Scout leaders to find out how.) We did great. Went on a couple of back-pack trips with other Camp Fire Girl groups. I was fearless. Slept on the ground under the stars and cooked gourmet meals.

Hubby’s family reunion was planned on the East Coast, of course. We were poor as church mice so the only way to go was by tent camping across the country. I saved $500 for gas (before credit cards) and when we had to pay for incidentals like campsites. (I had a book though that showed all the free camping spots. I planned accordingly, two days at the freebies, one day at a paid site that had washing machines and dryers.)

I planned the menu with recipes for every day we’d be on the road and bought all the food (a lot of cans) and put everything for each meal in a sack marked accordingly, which day and which meal.. We drove a VW bus back then and hubby built a tiny utility trailer that we pulled along behind. This is where all our camping gear (tent, stove, pots and pans, sleeping bags, and food went.)

Our daughter was married, the other soon to be and they stayed home with the dog, cat and took care of the house. Going with us were two younger teens (boy and girl) and grammar school aged boy. The teens slept while we traveled when they weren’t squabbling. The youngest loved watching out the window. No seat belts back then and he sat on the ice chest so he could see out the front window.

We barely made it up some of the highest mountains with our loaded trailer. And it wasn’t long before the bus wouldn’t start on its own–we all had to get out and push. Didn’t take much though, a pop of the clutch and it started and we all jumped back in.

When we reached our daily destination, it took us one hour to set  up camp. In the morning, it took one hour to take everything down. It rained so often at night, hubby would ask, “What cloud shall we camp under tonight?” All five of us slept in the tent together–very close quarters.

If was already raining when we arrived somewhere, we sat up the tent and hooked it to the VW and cooked and ate inside it, and slept in the VW, also cramped.

We finally arrived at our destination, one day late. Most of the relatives had gone home. We still got to see a lot of hubby’s family. He took the VW in to get it fixed. It worked well while were there, as soon as we took off it quit starting on his own. (We kept this VW bus for a long time and it continued to have this problem, but even kids could push it–or ladies in evening gowns–for a short distance and a pop of the clutch would get it started.)

Back on the road, we traveled a more southerly direction and actually did a bit of sightseeing. Camped and visited the Carlsbad Caverns. The wind came up in the night so fierce, people’s tents toppled, some blew away, but not ours, hubby always made sure our stakes were hammered into the ground.

We survived thunder storms, close lightning strikes, hid under a bridge during a tornado, but we finally made it home.

After that, we bought a camper to put on our old truck–my tent camping days were over. The camper was a big improvement.

We traveled to Oregon in truck and camper with two kids, and to Yellowstone with the youngest.

My latest “camping trips” have been in my daughter and son-in-law’s luxurious motor home, lots of fun, but nothing like the camping we used to do.

This past week our church had a family camping trip up in the mountains. I declined. The idea of sleeping on the ground in a tent, getting up in the night to go to an outhouse didn’t appeal at all. They had a wonderful time and I’m glad. I’ve retired from camping and I mean it.

Marilyn (who still loves to travel, but wants to sleep in a nice bed in a hotel room.)

Summers Past

/in /by

It’s fun to think back over the good times you’ve had in the past. Since it’s summer, I’ve been thinking a lot about how I spent my summers over the many years.

When we were little kids my dad built this unusual trailer that when you got to a campground the sides folded out and made beds. He had all sorts of cupboards and gadgets on it that contained all our camping gear. This was long before the same thing was invented and I’m sure my dad never even considered getting a patent. The summers I remember best when we slept in that trailer, my sister was still a toddler and I was around six or seven. We camped in Yosemite, yes, back in the days when you could camp right along the Merced River. Every night there was a fire fall off of Half Dome. (At least I think that’s where.) And you could go to the garbage dump at night and watch the bears come in and eat.

When we got a bit older (my teen years) my dad decided to start building boats. First, it was a little outboard and we spent our vacation at Bass Lake. Here we camped in tents right at the edge of the lake. (No longer allowed.) The next year he built an inboard motor boat so we could learn to water ski–and yes, he made the skiis too. I loved water skiing. My dad told everyone that I got up on the skiis before he even got the boat started. (He thought I could do anything.)

We stayed at the lake for 3 wonderful weeks and made all sorts of new friends–I even had a couple of summer romances. Dad let us kids take the outboard motor boat all over the lake by ourselves. What fun. We investigated hidden coves and swam in places we thought no one else had ever been.

Camping was the only way we could afford any kind of a vacation after hubby and I married. With our kids we pitched our tent in nearby campgrounds around Southern California, places we could drive to in an hour or two. We usually camped with friends who had kids and I learned how to cook about anything over a campfire.

With the youngest three of our kids, we loaded up our VW bus and a tiny trailer hubby had made to haul our supplies for three weeks and we took off across country. I’d planned all our meals for cooking on a camp stove and had the ingredients for every meal except for the fresh stuff we’d have to buy along the way. I’d saved $500 and that had to pay for gas and when we couldn’t find a free place to camp. (We didn’t have any such thing as a credit or gas card.) I did have a book that listed all the campgrounds in the country and how much they charged. We tried to stay in a free one for two nights, then one with showers and laundry on the third–for obvious reason. Our goal was a family reunion in Maryland.

To make a long story short, we arrived a day late. We’d been having trouble with our VW bus, it wouldn’t start without me and the kids pushing until hubby popped the clutch and it would get moving. We could only visit in hubby’s home town a few days, because we needed to get back on the road toward home. We went home a different way so as we drove we could see new things.

No matter where we put up our tent it would rain. It got to the point where hubby would say, “What cloud are we parking under tonight?” It took us one hour at night to get everything set up and cook dinner and one hour in the morning to eat breakfast and break camp.

We did make one sight-seeing stop on the way home. We camped near the Carlsbad Caverns and took the amazing tour to see the beautiful formations. When we went to bed in our tent that night, a huge windstorm came upon us and blew our tent down on top of us. We were fortunate, some of our camping neighbors’ tents actually blew away!

We made it home when were supposed to, but I’d enough tent camping. I told my husband we were going to buy a camper or I wasn’t going on anymore camping vacations. And that’s what we did. I really did do even more primitive camping later on, but that’s another story.

Marilyn