About two weeks ago my youngest grandson, Grant, went on a trip to the Boundary Waters with some friends. He had a blast and, from the way he talked about it, I know he will be going again. They scheduled this trip as one last summer adventure before going back to college. Grant also went to Colorado earlier this summer for a week of hiking in the mountains.
I can kind of relate to this on a smaller scale. Before I started my senior year in high school, my friend, Allan Peterson, and I decided to take time to go “up north” for a few days. We packed my parents’ ’58 Plymouth station wagon with our fishing tackle, a few clothes, sleeping bags, a little food and, most importantly, my Uncle Ben’s 5-hp Johnson Outboard motor.
As far as I can recall, we only rented a boat for one day and fished a little lake in the Aiken-Remer area. I cannot remember the name of the little lake that we fished so long ago but, as memory serves, we did catch a couple of fish. We parked overnight at wayside rests and drove to a bunch of different lakes to swim and shore fish over a few days. It was a fun time, although sleeping in the back of a station wagon for a few days was not like sleeping in a bed, but better than sleeping on the ground.
I guess that, for as long as I can remember, I have always had that longing for an outdoors adventure. As a kid my mother would dig out some old blankets from the attic and I’d throw one over the clothesline and pin it to said line and then place one on the ground for sleeping on. A couple of my friends would ask if we could sleep overnight in the tent. This usually lasted until the mosquitoes went into attack mode, at which time we would substitute the tent with our living room floor.
I never did have a “real” tent when I was a kid. I had always wanted one, but my parents had more important things to spend money on, like food and bills. I never owned a tent until I married and my two sons came along. That was when we actually had use for the tent that we had purchased. It was a nylon, cabin-style tent that was red on the outside and white on the top. This tent would get hot inside by midday and stay that way well into the night. It usually held out most of the water when it rained and this ultimately made a strong case for buying a camper.
When we first bought our pickup camper, I felt like I had just won the grand prize at the fair. That camper had everything that we needed and we made good use of it over the following years. The camper pretty much had it all: stove, refrigerator, heater, and most importantly; a toilet. As the years went by and the kids grew older, the camper seemed like it was getting smaller. I really loved that camper, but like everything else, it succumbed to time and just started to deteriorate. I had a lot of good memories of those days spent camping with the family.
If you are looking for a good way to spend time with family for a pretty minimal investment, try tenting. Most campgrounds are reasonably priced when it comes to tenting and I can’t think of a better way to get close to nature. I’ve owned a few tents over the years since, which I usually ended up loaning out to family members.
I don’t really need a tent now, but I will be buying one just to fulfill one of the things on my bucket list. I want to spend at least one night. camping at one of the National Forest campgrounds on Spider Lake. That’s about as adventuresome as I want to be at this point in my life. The only problem that I have is that I don’t really have anyone to go with me. My sons are busy, my grandsons are working or in college and my friends are as old as I am and probably not up for sleeping on the ground. I will have to see how it plays out, but I am pretty sure that I will be able to coax one of my sons or grandsons into doing this.
Until next time, with all of the negative things going on in our country right now I really believe that sitting on the bank of a river or a lake watching a bobber bouncing lazily in the breeze is a sure-fire way to relieve some stress.
Please take a few moments also to honor those who have sacrificed so much for the freedoms that we enjoy today. Also take a little extra time to remember those who made the ultimate sacrifice, those who have served and those troops that are serving today.