Camping

When I was a kid camping was our vacation. I'm not even sure I knew what a hotel was until high school.  I certainly never spent the night in one until Project Close-Up junior year. We camped in sun, snow, rain - the lady at the check-in cabin called it liquid sunshine. She was sleeping in a cabin, I was the one wringing sunshine out of my socks. My parents had a mustard yellow tent with real metal poles. We slept on the ground because according to my dad (a man who has spent more than one night in a sleeping bag dangling from an ice cliff, on purpose) real campers sleep on the ground. My brother and I were tasked with filling the water jug up each morning. The "water jug" was this enormous, shapeless white blob with a uselessly small angular handle at the top and a small red spigot at the bottom. It weighed about 400 pounds when full and was impossible to carry. My dad claims to have no memory of the wretched thing, perhaps because he wasn't the one in need of a chiropractor in elementary school.  Imagine my horror to see them still on the shelves at Bass Pro Shop.

This week I inflict this torture pass this tradition on to my own children. We have been hunting and gathering our supplies (aka stimulating the economy) and there might be room in the car for us too. Our new tent should take less than an hour to set up, without the need for four letter words or an engineering degree. And because my husband believes that real campers are crazy, we will be sleeping on queen sized air mattresses with sheets, pillows and blankets. We have a fan that runs on D batteries, a lantern that doubles as a bug zapper, and a converter that turns the cigarette lighter in the car into an electrical outlet.

Andrew has put the kibosh on picking fresh blueberries for our pancakes in the morning since he thinks the kids will inadvertently poison us (he may have a point) so our blueberries will come from Whole Foods. He declared that most of our meals will be eaten in local restaurants instead of charred over the campfire. (Part of his job requires him to teach food safety. There is no convincing him that a cooler full of melting ice is adequate refrigeration.)

My dad says we aren't real campers. My Visa bill says otherwise.