Family vacations

Have you ever been camping?

In the 80s my family has a leisure van, I probably could have omitted “In the 80s”. It had captains seats in the front and a bench seat in the back so we sat sideways but had a great view of everything. We traveled a lot in it, going to South Dakota and Wyoming. Although most of the time we were in cabins or the van we did tent camping a few times. I loved it. We all had the same sleeping bags, brown with flannel inside. We had a huge tent that took my dad hours to put up. It was something that I wish we had done more but my dad died young and my mom didn’t love it as much.

Many years later I did a trip with a rock climbing group. We were all camping outside. I bought a single-person tent and borrowed a sleeping bag, I was excited. It poured that night, it was awful. My car was parked nearby and I contemplated going into it for shelter but decided to rough it out as I didn’t want to seem like a wimp. I found out the next day that a lot of people ended up in their cars, I guess it wasn’t considered wimpy. It was all part of the experience for me.

I used to do a relay race that went over 2 days. When not running our van would go to a predetermined location to get a couple hours of sleep. I opted to sleep outside, enjoying the beauty of the night sky in the remote location. It was always something I looked forward to.

I would still do it today. Tents and sleeping bags are so much better now.