It was the summer of 1971 and Paul and I had been married for one year.
Paul and his parents had done a lot of camping when Paul was young and he loved it and had great memories of camping. I had never been camping in my life.
We, well mostly Paul, decided that we should go camping on our first vacation. He just knew that I would love camping and was determined that my first experience would be wonderful.
I wasn't quite that sure but was excited to give it a try.
I'm not sure how we picked the campsite, but it was called Roger's Rock Campground at Lake George, NY. We brought Paul's 12 ft. boat on the roof of our '70 VW bug with the big motor, oars, and all the boating and camping gear inside.
There were a few hitches to our vacation.
One - the campground was three hours away, and it was first come first serve...and it was August. That meant that we needed to leave REALLY early in the morning to get a site.
Two - on the way there I read a magazine article about a person who was bit by a rabid bat and all that that entailed. I already didn't much like bats, but this solidified it and I was paranoid every time I went into our tent that a bat would be in there.
Three - we arrived in time to get a really nice, private site. So far so good. We had borrowed his parents' camping gear. The tent was the umbrella type. Can you guess what the next hitch was? Yep, we forgot to pack the umbrella thingy. It was three hours home, so going back to get it was out of the question. So...Paul proceeded to cut down a young tree (even though there were signs saying not to cut down trees!!!). Desperate times call for desperate measures, right? All he had to cut it with was an old boy scout hatchet and so it took him quite a long time. Then the four corners of the tent had to be tied to nearby trees.
I'm not sure how long we had been there but whenever I had to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night I made Paul go with me. One night we saw (and heard) a bear going through the trash cans near the rest room. I decided that I didn't need to go that bad!
Four - Paul's hand later got severely burned (3rd degree) from the rubber hatchet handle while trying to hatchet some fire wood. That night he needed to go to the nearest ER to have it looked at. Why in the world I decided to sit in the car while he went in I cannot imagine. I guess I had no experience with how long ER visits could be. (They had to debride the burn blisters on his hand.) So, as could be expected, I got tired of waiting in the car and went into the hospital, and locked the keys in the car. Now Paul was an old hand at unlocking car doors with a coat hanger, but who knew that a 1970 Volkswagen was practically airtight. There was no way he was getting into that car. Would you believe that there was a guy in the ER who had been a Volkswagen car salesman in Hawaii? Yep, and he knew how to get into the car.
Wow, a lot of hitches. I think we came home a day early with me not sure I liked camping. We did have some fun times though. We had fun being out on the water in our boat and swimming from rocks in the middle of the lake.
Looking back, I can think of only one other time that we went camping. It was for a weekend and it entailed bringing Kristen, along with her potty chair, to a campground near Misquamicut.
Maybe camping is something that you need to start off with as a child, lol!
