The Camping Trip, Part II

Apr 29, 2009 by winjaw

Camping is what you remember.  It’s the hiking, the exploring, the cooking over the fire, the contest to see who has the most ticks.

And when you’re safely back, and finally gotten out of the shower, it’s a time to recall those, shall we say, interesting things.

Anyway, just thought I’d point out some observations from our latest expedition.

– We pack waaayyyy too much stuff. We filled the Suburban with five sleeping bags, a three-room tent, a small convenience store worth of “snacks,”  lord knows how many suitcases of clothes, hiking poles, flashlights, books, magazines, etc., etc., etc., We spent more time unloading/loading than at the actual camp. I mean we were gone about 24 hours.

–  Regardless of how many pairs of clothes/shoes you bring for your kids, all of them will be wet/dirty beyond wearability within four hours.

– The Sons of Thunders’ whining increases exponentially every minute they are forced to help set up and are not playing with their friends.

–  Setting up camp with the Sons of Thunder will cause you to use phrases your parents used on you and you swore you would never use on your children. Among those are: “Because I said so,” “Just do it,” and “Help me with this now or I’ll show you the meaning of crying.”

–  Best line: From the five-year-old member of the Sons of Thunder: “Oh yeah. Dad, welcome to the ultimate playground.” And it was, no question. Every kind of slide, climbing thingy, pulley/pushy/swingy thing you could think of, and some you’ve never dreamed of. Tunnels, ropes galoare, you name it. And all covered by that that space-age recycled tire/wood chip/rubber matting to protect from any falls. Basically, the “if your parachute doesn’t open, land here” kind of material.

Now the irony of the whole thing was not lost on me. Here we are, expected to be enjoying the great outdoors, you know, beating our chests and telling ghost stories type of thing. Yet we get there to the great outdoors and everyone heads off to the playground that has a multi-six figure price tag.

– Dads hang around the grill; especially the one we had – towed on its own trailer, two large propane tanks, big enough to smoke a hog. Dads also slowly back away after you turn on the propane tank and you can hear the gas blowing through, but the stupid gas won’t light. And dads start to move away proportionally quicker the longer the propane hisses and still doesn’t light.

– The smaller the insect, the bigger the bite.

– The Shaming: And yes, I’m ashamed to admit we were shamed. A bunch of dads and a few moms took the kids down to the river. It was about waist high, slow current and the kids were having a blast just swimming out about half way to this sandbar.

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And we’re all not saying anything, but thinking: it will take us about 3.2846 seconds to reach the kids if there’s any trouble and if we think it’s okay for our kids to swim then it should be okay because we are the parents and there’s not an adult in the water because it’s friggin freezing and we’re not stupid and why can’t the kids just have fun and …

And then we decided to just tell the kids to get out of the water. Because no one wanted to be the dad that got into some argument with Ranger Rick over whether it was safe to swim and then got their kid kicked out of Boy Scouts.

– The Gully. Also known as the revenge from The Shaming. So some kid finds some old rope, I mean old rope. And some dad found this gully – steep, but only about 25 feet or so down. So of course we all go over and tie the ropes to the trees and let them play Army or Warrior or whatever as they climb down and up the gully with the rope.

And we’re having a blast. There’s no safety harness. There’s no safety helmet. There’s no   instructor at the bottom. There’s no safety rope. And half the kids slip and end up sliding all the way down and start to cry and get scraped and cut and have snot coming out of their noses and they love every second of it.

As one dad put it, I guess the only way to have fun here is to break the rules.

– The Ha, Ha Got You Back Moment: So there’s this really nice pavilion overlooking the ultimate playground. And there are dozens of these really, really big wooden rocking chairs. And I mean big and heavy.

And of course they’ve got a steel cable running through them so no one will steal them. And I’m thinking 1. who’s going to steal a rocking chair from a Boy Scout camp? And 2. these things are too friggin heavy to steal anyway.

But the kicker to all this is about four kids run by us as we are sitting there. And every one of them tripped on that steel cable and plastered their face on the concrete floor. And then we saw Ranger Rick.

And one mom who absolutely has no fear went right up to Ranger Rick and gave him the “safety talk.”

And that was worth the entire trip.

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