About Camping.

When we were kids, my parents would pack-up Amanda and I, load the car with the essentials, connect the pop-up camper, and off across America we go.  I have seen much of this country thanks to them, and those very long road trips.  I didn’t appreciate them at the time, I’m sure.  As an adult though, those are some of my fondest memories.  I often times look back at my childhood, and I wonder how my parents were able to do the things they did, how they afforded it, and managed all of it. This is about camping.

I was a useless kid, when we would go on these trips I never did anything, my parents never asked me for help.  I was such a lazy kid.  I’m just here for your entertainment.  I wish I had paid attention more.  I wish I had appreciated it more.  One year, we went to the Grand Canyon, and my mom was so excited about it.  It was the middle of summer, and hot and humid and gross, and even as a child these things would annoy me.  We drove into the park, and went to the first lookout and parked the car.  We all go out of the car, looked over, and I remember staring blankly unimpressed, ‘Can we go now?’  I was a shit-head from an early age.  We stayed near a dodgy looking Flintstone’s “theme park” though, and that was my saving grace on that trip.  It was literally so shady looking, but for 10 year old Henry it was better then staring at a hole in the ground.  Needless to say, adult Henry wants to go back and appreciate the Grand Canyon, and hike it, and go rafting.   

We had a pop-up camper, with beds and a sink, and air conditioning.  My dad had one of those large conversion vans, little blue lights rimmed the ceiling of it when it got dark out, and we had a TV with a VCR. Since it was just four of us, we had a lot of space.  Needless to say, we weren’t roughing it really, but it was camping none-the-less.  We would have campfires, and grill every meal, and if we wanted a real treat we would go into whatever small town we were in and have breakfast at the local place, or buy fried chicken from gas stations, or order pizza.  We would swim, and because we usually stayed at campground chains we would take part in whatever the nightly activity was.  I was a lucky kid.  My mother recently reminded me of a story of when we went to Vegas.  I don’t know if Circus, Circus is still a thing, but when we went it was, and I hit a winning streak, and ended up walking away with a shit ton of stuffed animals.  When we got to the airport, I guess I insisted that my parents shrink-wrap them and pay the extra money to fly them all back as excessive baggage.  ‘That wasn’t me, mom, that was Amanda.’ ‘That was definitely you that insisted on it…’ She was right. Oh, little gay boy… I know, not camping related…

This weekend, I drove out to Starved Rock to camp for the weekend.  This trip was planned under the impression we would have fall weather, and not the 90-degree’s we ended up getting. Thursday, I ran around collecting camping equipment, and packing it into the car not realizing how much was needed.  I was overwhelmed, this must be how my parents felt, but they also had two brats in tow.  On Friday, we hit the road and pulled into the campground, an open field behind a biker bar called Papa Murph’s, with no showers, but two potter potties in the middle.  We arrived late, and had to set-up in the dark, but settled in fine, and made dinner and a campfire and looked at the stars.  It got cool at night, and I settled into my tent and into the sleeping bag.  I then woke-up to 90 degrees and sweating profusely.  What. The. Fuck. I got out of the tent, Julio was ruffling for the coffee maker.  No way.  Not happening.  ‘Let’s go. We need to find gas, and a Starbucks.’ ‘The closest one is 16 miles away, isn’t that kind of far?’ ‘I literally don’t care right now.’ There was no electricity at this camp, so we needed to charge our phones in the car.  When we got back to camp, iced coffee in hand, I decided to cut the gas, and leave the car on to charge my phone.  No need to waste gas.  Let me come back to this. 

As we sat around the camp in the blistering sun we tried to figure out what to do with the day.  One of my friends, ‘It’s so hot, we could rent a hotel room just to use their pool for a few hours and come back.  It’ll be cheap if we split it.’  ‘And we can shower too. Yes!’  I know, not exactly the camping experience, but that was the best idea ever! We booked the room, packed up the cars, and as I slipped the key in the ignition…. Nothing.  Remember that phone that was charging?  The car battery was completely dead. Henry, you’re a real idiot sometimes.  I didn’t have jumper cables.  ‘There is a group of 20 straight guys over there… one of them has to have cables.’  Sure enough they did, and were nice enough to let me borrow them.  One of them was even nice enough to come jump the car when we couldn’t figure it out after 20 minutes. 

Anyway, this weekend was pretty great. I slept outside in a tent, and we got to swim, and grill and play games and Sunday we went hiking at Starved Rock, and most importantly, I got sit around a campfire with some pretty wonderful people.  And we talked about life, and laughed about stupid shit, and in the end it made me appreciate two things.  One, the crap my parents went through to show two little punks so much of the United States.  Two, that I camped my whole life, and didn’t know how to cause I didn’t appreciate it the way I should have.  Anyway, thanks mom and dad… sorry I thought the Grand Canyon was dumb and the Flintstone’s park was cooler.  Nia, Veronica, Oscar and Julio, thanks for a great weekend under the stars behind the Papa Murph’s, and from keeping me from trying to make friends with the bikers.  Although, maybe they were really nice and not scary?  Guess we’ll never know…