OK, he’s still just a little kid, but he’s been on The Big Man Camp Out. That was this weekend. It was his first camp out not in a backyard. Everyone had a faboo time.
It was at the park just up the street, so it was nearly in a backyard. This was my plan. I wanted to stay close in case things went horribly awry, so we could just duck back home in a hurry. But as things turned out there was no reason to fear. He did great. He actually wants to do it again. (Unlike the Little Woman. She’s not big on camping. Unless there’s at least a Super 8 involved.)
We roll into the campgrounds about 4:30. This was pretty good, so far we’re only a half hour off schedule, but we’re still doing pretty good. At this point it’s me and both boys (Soupo and Katcha) and Uncle Skippy. It’s been raining around here for, oh, six months, so things were a little damp. It wasn’t actively raining at the moment, so we had that going for us. It really hadn’t been raining all week, so a good half of our campsite was not swamp. (We were doing a little better than some people around us on that score.) So it was a tag-team deal to unpack the car and unpack Uncle Skippy’s truck and keep the boy’s (mostly Katcha) out of the worst of the mud and set up the tents. That’s as far as we got, to the “set up the tents” when the Little Woman shows up.
The plan was for her to stay for dinner and switch cars and then go home with Katcha, but what with one thing and another (one thing would be Katcha, another would be hip-deep mud bogs) she decided just to hot-foot it out of there. So we could got the tents up and started thinking about the fire when Uncle Kev and Aunt Gail showed up. Uncle Kev was staying, Aunt Gail just showed up for the evening. (She’s in with the Little Woman, camping = Super 8.)
“Should we put up the dining fly?” (That’s a tarp on poles over the picnic table, in case you didn’t know. Or just call it something else.)
“I dunno. You think?”
“I dunno, we’re under these trees.”
“Yeah there is that. It is nice and shady.”
“Yeah, but we did bring it. Maybe we should put it up.”
“You think?”
“Yeah.”
“OK.”
That turned out to be a fortuitous conversation. So we put up the fly while Uncle Kev got the fire started. Or started to get the fire started. Uncle Kev didn’t have all that much Boy Scout experience so the fire was a bit of a challenge for him. But he did get it going. With only two matches too. Not so shabby.
Since good nutrition is the corner stone of good health, and good health is the foundation of a good time and a good time is the renovated rec room of camping, we started dinner. Only it wasn’t quite “dinner”, it was a camping dinner. We just sort of cooked things and ate them as they got done. Or nearly done, depending on how long we wanted to wait. There was black beans and rice, hot dogs, trail mix, big red smokies (a hot dog sized smoked sausage, very good), beef jerky, a thunder storm, cheese, garlicky buttery bread to eat in rips, Fritos®, and for dessert, roasted marshmallows.
Oh yeah, did I say? Right after Uncle Kev got the fire going KERRaaaakkk- kaBOOOOOOM! it started to storm. But that was OK, we were under the fly and had real long forks to cook the hot dogs. Soupo had a little run-in with his roasting fork. He accidentally touched the metal and burned his finger and dropped his wienie in the dirt. But I washed his wienie off and Aunt Gail put an ice cube on the burn and I heated up his wienie again and everything was OK.
I was getting a little worried about how Soupo was going to take the storm. It was getting kinda loud, a lot of thunder and lightning. It could have been scary. But he was OK, he really didn’t seem to care. He ate a couple of hot dogs, drank his grape soda (that’s what it said on the label. “Grape soda”. Mostly because I don’t think “Sludgy Vile Purple Carbonated Drink-like Substance” would sell very well.) and just hung out with the guys. (Plus Aunt Gail, but she wasn’t staying.)
After we finished eating, the rains stopped. That was nice. That way Soupo could play on the playground for a while. By the time it was dark, the little guy was beat. He said he “closed his eyes and when he opened them it was tomorrow.” He slept hard that night.
The next morning, things weren’t quite as we left them the night before. Someone, I’m not saying who (mostly because it would make me look bad) forgot to put the food away. Not like it was just lying around the picnic table, but the food bag was just sitting there. (But in this nameless person’s defense, I… I mean “they” did remember to put the trash in the trunk, away from pesky raccoons.) Things weren’t as bad as they could have been. We only lost one box of doughnuts (but they were the powdered ones) and a little bag of trail mix. And a squirrel pooped on the picnic table. Now that was just rude.
I got a surprise when I took the trash to the dumpster to throw it away. Someone threw out a perfectly good raccoon. There I am, in mid-throw, and way in the back of the dumpster a raccoon lifts his head and looks at me. At least I didn’t chuck the trash bag onto his head. The raccoon just sort of looks at me. If it was a cartoon, he would have said “Pardon me, but you may have noticed I am currently in this dumpster. If you would be so kind, could you expedite my release.” But it wasn’t a cartoon, this is real life man! The raccoon just looked at me. So I left a note on the office door (the camp office wasn’t open yet) letting them know they had a raccoon in the trash that could probably be recycled instead.
-Rue.
