First Family Camping Trip - We Survived E-mail

A few months back I wrote about my dreaded upcoming camping trip with my extremely outdoorsy husband, Bill and our five year old son, Andrew. As promised, here are the details:

To start off, it took about 5 weeks to pack for our weekend of roughing it in the wilderness. We could barely fit everything we needed into our 5 x 8 foot cargo trailer.

Of course, most of the trailer was filled with about 8,000 pounds of firewood that Bill had proudly chopped himself from some weird forestry program near the campground. The rest of the trailer held whatever else Bill could shove inside. (I let him be totally in charge of this trip since I’m usually in charge of our “regular” trips.)

Now, I do have to say if I were in charge of packing we wouldn’t have even needed a trailer. As a former high school GAP employee, my folding and packing technique is so superior I’m sure I could have somehow fit every item into the regular trunk of our car. That’s just how good I am.

At any rate, the only traumatic aspect of packing was when I realized the Jiffy Pop Popcorn was nowhere to be found. I was panic-stricken because this was one of the few things I was looking forward to, but luckily we found the popcorn before we drove off to the boondocks.

Our 90 minute car ride went very smoothly and was just long enough to polish off mass quantities of snack food. I really needed the energy from the snacks to watch out for questionable wildlife while Bill set up our tent, cots, sleeping bags, gazebo, chairs, cooking station, lanterns and campfire.

After setting up, we relaxed and waited for our friends to join us. Four other families were camping with us the first night and five more families were supposed to come the next day.

Anyway, the crazy part about the camping trip was the entire first 24 hours was absolutely PERFECT. And I mean it. I hate the outdoors. I didn’t even want to go camping and I was having the time of my life. All five families were at our campsite from mid-afternoon until about 10:00 pm. The kids played phenomenally well together and the adults just got to hang out and relax. And the weather was as beautiful as it could possibly be—75 degrees with absolutely zero humidity. In fact, my biggest complaint was that my Hershey bar didn’t melt enough when I made my s’mores.

The next day was a different story. It was the beginning of the rain that never ended. And because we knew bad weather was approaching, we continuously listened to our top-of-the-line weather radio that even Tom Skilling would kill to own. The forecast called for continuous rain and thunderstorms every second of the day for the next year so I wasn’t surprised when two of the five families coming that day canceled. Luckily, neither of those two families was in charge of bringing the second day’s desserts.

The moment the day 2 people arrived, it began to rain pretty heavily. We decided to do what I always love doing during a rainstorm—fish! Actually, it wasn’t so bad. Even in the rain, seeing all the parents showing the kids how to fish and then seeing the kids catching fish was very enjoyable. And although it had been raining during our fishing excursion, it was nothing compared to the torrential downpour that came next.

For the next four hours straight, it was a total deluge. Andrew’s “Diego” character umbrella was no match for the amount of rain coming down and we were all drenched and muddy. The kids loved it! (But I’m sure that my friend who wore a miniskirt and strappy sandals was not too happy! Even I knew not to wear that!) At one point, 18 of us squeezed into our not-as-large-as-I-thought gazebo as the rain just pounded down around us.

When the rain slowed down long enough for everyone to run back to their campsites, no one was surprised that almost everyone’s tents had started leaking. (Bill was very proud that our tent was dry.) And since the rain was supposed to continue, we had a decision to make. 18 people could squeeze into the few non-leaky-at-the-moment tents or we could call it a day and LEAVE THE CAMPGROUND. YAY!

Bill was outvoted 17 to 1 and we spent the next several hours packing our wet and muddy items. The nice part was that the rain actually stopped long enough for all of us to have dinner by the campfire and of course, a second night of s’mores. This time my chocolate got a little melty. After dinner, we all said goodbye and felt great that we left on a positive note.

The worst part of the camping trip is that I totally loved it. Although I don’t think I’ll ever understand the whole camping-outdoor living thing, I do have to admit that I’m actually looking forward to making this trip an annual event. I’ve already started thinking about all the new camping items I want for Hanukkah. But don’t tell anyone I actually said that. I do have a reputation to uphold.

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© 2007 Susan Dubin, Buffalo Grove, Illinois