Do a Barney Oldfield!: The Camping Trip

When I was a kid, I hated camping. I was in the Boy Scouts sometime around age ten or eleven, and I hated camping since almost the first camping trip I took with them. It was cold. We were ice fishing. A three day trip. Largely boring. I didn’t have the right foot protection and needed help. And the teasing didn’t stop. I had deluded myself into thinking there would be no bullies in Boy Scouts. What an idiot I was. There was an ever-pervasive ‘every man for himself’ attitude on these early camping trips that I hated and only got worse the more I ended up detesting camping.

I didn’t break through these sour feelings until I actually made friends with other kids on my Boy Scout troop. That was in seventh grade, and our patrol was made up of all the geeks the other patrols didn’t want. And I was the patrol leader, being the geekiest. But at least camping became tolerable. And being the leader forced me to worry less about myself and more about how others were getting along. Unlike the patrol leaders I had earlier in my scouting career.

The Boy Scouts definitely showed me the kind of leader I did NOT want to be.

I just couldn’t understand how the Boy Scouts, with all their mottos and creeds and rules for behavior, could be just as full of bullying thugs as every other aspect of society. The notion left me physically sick. But I’m starting to devolve this blog into a dark place that doesn’t exist for me anymore, so let’s move on.

I’m telling you all that so you’ll understand my mindset when Lorie suggested we take the kids camping for the last weekend in September.

We went to Rocky Gap State Park in Maryland for two evenings, arriving late on Friday and leaving at noon on Sunday. We ended up having a blast. The ‘every man for himself’ aspect of camping completely dissolved into family bonding and fun. The kids had a grand time. I surprised myself with how relaxed I was and how much fun I had. But I don’t remember squat about the campfire or campfire cooking. Thankfully, Lorie was the kind of Girl Scout that other Girl Scouts look up to. She kicked into super-mode and had all those details under control. I sat, cooked a hot dog on a stick, and read some comics.

And we told scary stories. And I scared the pants off the kids. That was fun.

On Friday, as we’re packing and preparing to leave, I earned the ire of my children as I collected all iPad’s and iPod Touches and put a weekend-long ban on the devices. Even for the car trip to the campground. The weekend was going to be completely without video games.

And no… I didn’t seriously consider for a second leaving my iPad and iPhone behind. Let’s be realistic. I read comics by the fire in the evening and looked at my comic strip websites in the morning while sipping coffee. I said it was a good weekend, remember?

On Saturday, we ended up at the mouth of one of the hiking trails all prepared for a hike. Out of my bag I pulled the kids’ three iPod Touches. I handed them out, explained they were only allowed to use the camera function, and told them that we would be judging the best picture later. This went over very well, and the kids had a blast taking pictures. I’ll leave the majority of those for the kids to show you on their blogs. But here are each of the winning pictures per kid:

Alex’s picture

Ashton’s picture

Katie’s picture

The nights were much colder than I was prepared for. But the kids had warm sleeping bags and Lorie and I huddled for warmth. The cabin we stayed in was just bare bones, and we only used it for sleeping. The rain stayed away, which was good.

And I did remember one trick from my Boy Scout camping days….

… I doubled up on socks.