A tent-ish kind of extravaganza!

Ah, tent camping! And while it wasn’t the kind of tent that a traveling circus or a film festival might find a home in it was still a home for all three of us that evening. And such a grand evening it was!

My Esteemed Companion, her boy and I took up residence for a night at Russian Gulch State Park. We were wondering, when we rolled up, if were even going to be able to get a space at all but the small gods of camping and children were about and passed along an offering of last minute cancellations. We found a space that suited us…clean, wide, with a rain canopy of short and inviting trees…all that we could have asked for and more for a first time out experience.

I always thrill to the setting up of camp, as it's always a challenge, always a wonderment to behold once it's up and operational. To go from an rustic empty space with a cold fire ring and a picnic bench to a full out inviting, warm and cozy outdoor abode is an amazing process. Coming into the campground that evening I was amazed to see so many new and interesting kinds of equipment about. I haven’t been on a camp out in quite a while so I haven’t been keeping up on the latest in outdoor technology. I suppose that it didn’t matter much, being old school, for we had all that we needed. Besides dry fire wood, a stove, a source of light after hours, a cooler of full of food, a water tight tent and a bevy of sleeping bags, what more can a person ask for?

Years ago I used to go desert camping with my father. He would bring me along to hang out with his motorcycle buddies who always came along well tricked out with RVs and trailers in tow. He, instead, would load up a cooler full of beer, a package of racetrack steaks, throw his motorcycle on top of the truck bed, then, almost as afterthought, swing by and pick me up, too. Now that was rustic! There is nothing quite like sleeping on a hard plywood bed under the stars next to a noisy encampment full of wild motorheads, soaking in a high desert night time cold that seemed to always find its way through my US government surplus bag.

Still, of all my camping memories it had to be one of the best for it was without expectation, only discovery and joy. This past weekend was an awful lot like that, too. It came packed to the brim with wild boyish wonder, with a bag of full of corn that turned magically into tent stakes and then back into corn again, with a trek to the sea shore that found us wading through a creek bed back to camp only to find out afterwards, wet shoes and all, that there was a trail with a bridge down to the water after all. We ate well, slept well, coped with the chill and the rain like true champions, took advantage of the after hours quiet time to revel before the fire without all the extraneous noise and found out that a good solid flashlight is really the best tool around to navigate to the restrooms after dark.

It was good fun, plain old fashioned sweet and wonderful fun. We didn’t need the latest in outdoor gear, we didn’t need to have gourmet food in the cooler, we certainly didn’t need a gas generator, an RV full of goodies, a boom box or a GPS device to find our way to happiness. We took ourselves down the shore, found our tentish selves full of hope and promise and lived up to that promise by sharing with each other a lot of mirth, merriment and glee. Now, what more do you need on a camp out than that?

Salud!