Camping with My Family

I remember our family's first camping trips as if I just came home from them. They were definitely educational situations for all of us. But that didn't stop our dad from taking us on those yearly learning experiences, he called camping.

My dad and his second wife later became proficient campers, so much so that they had their own custom camper trailer built for them. They also became the original architectural barriers committee for the Easter Seals Society because they both were in wheelchairs and camped. They traveled all over the western United States, with their camper in tow, investigating and reporting to Easter Seals information which was then taken to Congress. A lot of the original legislation on publicly accessible places came out of my father's work. I remember his proudly pointing out the handicapped parking spots and signs, ramped curbs, widened public doorways and alternate ramp access to public buildings.

My parents divorced when I was eight years old and my mother got primary custody of all three of us with my father getting weekend visitations, shared holidays as well as two weeks during summer. Ah yes, the two week summer visitation turned into two week long camping trips.

I'm really not sure how he came up with camping since he was originally a city boy, although he was half Cherokee. He knew nothing about camping. He wasn't even a Boy Scout. He grew up in San Francisco, California for part of his childhood.

Even though we grew up on a farm that definitely did not qualify us to be campers any more than owning pets qualifies anyone to be a farmer. We were as inexperienced and as uninformed as you can get and we went camping.

Our first two week camping trip lasted a total of three days.

My father got "expert" advice on which supplies to take and where to camp. I think he fired the "expert" after this trip.

We went to the Sugar Loaf Resort in Mount Shasta, California. It was scenic, pleasant to the eye and very close to the extremely clear, blue Lake Shasta. Actually the camping spots were way too close to the lake. The ground had about a forty-five degree slant into the lake where we spent half the day pitching our tents and laying out our air mattresses on top of the rocks and twigs. We didn't know that we were supposed to sweep the camp area before setting it up. Like I said this was a learning experience

Every day we spent time blowing the mattress's back up after spending a night sliding from the uphill side to the downhill side of our tents in our sleeping bags and climbing back up through the rocks and twigs to our deflated beds. After three days my very tired father chose to be merciful and to take his exhausted children back to their mother just a tad bit earlier than expected.

There were some positive things that came out of this trip though: 1. This was the trip where my first fish caught me. I had given up on fishing and was pulling my hook out of the water. The teeny baby bass, whose eyes were almost as big as its body jumped over a foot out of the water to grab my hook. It took both my father and the resort owner to convince me to let the fingerling go. 2. There was something positive for there being so many rocks in our camp. This is where I walked into my lifelong passion for rock collecting. 3. The camp store was fun to visit and the bathroom facilities were very convenient. 4. And I got a story that I've had fun retelling over the years.

The next summer, my dad decided to take us camping again. He brought his new girlfriend who later became his second wife. This time we weren't anywhere near a lake or Shasta National Park. We went to Soda Springs in the northern Sierra Nevada on the way to Lassen National Park.

This time we lasted a week.

Our camp ground had no slope to it and was near the small creek that ran though the camp ground. We didn't use air mattresses. My dad and his girlfriend slept on cots and we had our sleeping bags on top of mats which we had put on top of our swept camp site with no remaining rocks or twigs. We enjoyed scary camp stories and the daily accounts about what happened in the middle of the night.

This is where we found out that my older brother walked in his sleep. One night he was climbing my dad's tent while screaming about being chased by a bear. Another night he ran out of the campsite screaming. He later came back and said that he woke up walking to the bathroom, which was over a mile away from us.

Near the end of the first week it poured for hours and the teeny creek turned into a roaring torrent and completely turned our campsite into a sixteen inch deep pond. No one told us about that being a common occurrence when it rained, until it rained. All of us ended up in our dad's tent, on his cots while we watched our entire campsite floating around in the water. We spent the night in his tent and in the car since it rained most of the night. After it stopped raining the next day, we moved our campsite to a neighboring, drier, campsite and shook everything out. We found that our food supplies had been ruined and that there was nothing dry to sleep in or to wear.

We had a family meeting and decided to pack it in. My mother got us home a week earlier than expected. This time she wasn't surprised.

The positive things that came out of this trip were: 1. Until the deluge, we actually had fun camping and exploring the area. 2. We found an area in the hills above the campsites which had old Indian arrow heads on the ground. 3. We visited the "soda" springs and tasted the naturally carbonated mineral water that continuously flowed out and tried it with Kool Aid. We don't recommend that. 4. And of course, I have another story which I get to tell.

This was the trip that taught my father to do his own research on a location before committing family time and effort to going there. We didn't have any more problems with camping sites after this trip and managed to stay out for the entire two weeks on later trips. He and his second wife became expert campers and we all benefited from that.

Neither of my brothers camped after they left home. But those years of training did help me when I worked with the Rainbows or Hippies for several years when I and my family went to their local annual gathering. I also learned to do my own research before I go out on each trip to find out what to expect. That experience has also helped me to function well whenever I have found myself in unexpected situations, with less than desirable circumstances out in the mission field, because I know that I will live to tell about it.

Sources:

http://www.shastaoutdoorfun.com/assets/RegionSearch4th.cfm?id=19

http://www.hikercentral.com/campgrounds/115116.html

http://welcomehere.org/gathering_of_the_tribes/annual/?Rainbow_Gatherings