August Camping Adventures, Part 5: Art, Rain, and Realizations

I vaguely remember making a silly promise somewhere that I would wrap up the August camping trip by the end of September….and here I am the afternoon of September 30, wishing I had not procrastinated.  So much to say about such a little trip…but a promise is a promise, and I’ll do my best.

Chicago traffic is sometimes just the reminder you need that living in a small-ish town has its advantages.  Taking I-94 through the heart of Chicago at 5:00 p.m. on a Friday tests even the most patient of souls, and our little car was not filled with patient souls; bickering alternated with silence alternated with cussing.  The back-seaters bore the boredom with as much grace as they could summon, and eventually we were out of the worst of it and could stop for dinner as the sun was setting.  Patrice kept gamely trying to find campsites, but I put my foot down; tonight would be a hotel room, pure and simple.  We made it as far as Janesville, Wisconsin, finding a reasonable room at a run-down Ramada.  There’s something incredibly sad about these has-been hotels.  Despite a grand atrium in the center with a swimming pool, the carpet was shabby and the lobby smelled like onion rings.  But the room was clean and the rate was appealing, and it was downright luxury compared to the outdoors.  We enjoyed the shower, the pool, and finally the pillows to their fullest extent.

Refreshed and full of Perkins breakfast, we drove the small distance to Madison.  The plan was to explore the capitol and city center, and buy some provisions at the farmer’s market on the square.  We bought some cheese curds of course, and a block of aged local cheddar.  We wandered inside the capitol building, and climbed to the top for a tiny museum visit and a lookout over the city.  Madison has always held a fond place in my heart:  Midwesterners who love beer and cheese, who built their capital city between two pretty lakes, who effortlessly combine university town with bustling city of politicians—what’s not to love?

The gorgeous interior of the Wisconsin Capitol

Downtown Madison

Back into the car, we set off for our final destination, Devil’s Lake State Park.  For several years we have been camping with the same group of people at Devil’s Lake.  We met these folks when our kids were together at the same daycare, and we’ve been friends ever since.  We are five couples, averaging two kids each (one couple has three for our one), and life has been such that we rarely see these folks outside of our annual camping trip, but we dutifully reserve every February, work out the meal schedule in June, and pull through the entrance at the south end of Devil’s Lake every late July or early August.  This year, we decided to drop off the tents first; while Patrice got everything set up and Gaël went in search of his buddies, Aude and I would go into the nearest town to get food for dinner.  We were first up on the dinner schedule, since we were leaving a couple of days sooner than the others.  I had decided to keep it simple with brats and buns, sauerkraut, potato salad and chips.  I forgot dessert, but another couple came to the rescue with some sweets for the kids.  The weather was lovely, but rain was brewing on the horizon, and would plague us the entire weekend.

We always enjoy catching up with these people, even if we’re huddled under a tarp against the elements.  Sleeping in the tent was damp to say the least, and we woke up to a mildly frightening network of daddy-long-legs seeking shelter under our rain flap.  Making breakfast, chatting with others, going to take a shower--everything was twice as difficult while dodging raindrops.  The consensus after breakfast was to skip the beach for obvious reasons, wait for the weather to clear a bit for an afternoon hike, and spend the morning at a local curiosity, Dr. Evermor’s Forevertron, the largest scrap metal sculpture in the world.  Surreal is not sufficient enough an adjective….

Baraboo, Wisconsin is home to the Circus World Museum, the International Crane Foundation, and Dr. Evermor’s Forevertron.  For a small town in the middle of nowhere, it’s got a lot going on.  The Forevertron is a park of sorts which is located behind a surplus store.  There’s not much parking.  There is a lot of scrap metal.  A LOT of scrap metal.  Made into one of the most gorgeous artistic arrangements I’ve ever seen.  The late morning mist added to the mood as we wandered from strange object to strange object—a lifetime of collecting, visualizing, and welding spread before us.  Words are insufficient to describe, and my photos don’t do it justice.  Take the time to visit if you ever have a chance, you won’t be disappointed.  More information can be found at: http://worldofdrevermor.com/.

They move!

I don't think he could even make sense of it upside-down

That afternoon we ventured to Parfrey’s Glen trail.  The park guide describes it as, “Gently ascending moderate walking trail enters the sublimely spectacular hushed narrow gorge with moss and ferns and a small stream in the bottom of the glen.”  I describe it as “Joy realizes she doesn’t like slippery rocks”, or, alternately, the “is that my child that just climbed 50 feet up and is now precariously hanging from a small tree limb?!” trail.  Pretty sure that harmless little hike took years off my life.

Dinner was fajitas expertly made by our friends while more rain fell and finding the exact perfect angle to pull a tarp so as to not get pools of water that suddenly shower unwitting folks underneath.  By this time, the four of us had had enough of camping.

The next morning, while I was in the bathhouse debating whether or not it was worth it to take a shower, a mother and four tiny, adorable girls walked in speaking Spanish.  They were not dressed like the kids we were with; they were not wearing expensive little Keen’s shoes or Columbia jackets; I don’t know where they were from, and perhaps they were on vacation from Chicago or Madison or Milwaukee, but hearing their language transported me to places I’ve visited in the world where camping isn’t a past-time, it’s a way of life.  In many many places in the world, children and adults sleep every night together in one room, or in hammocks strung from trees, or in makeshift shelters more rudimentary than a tent.

I felt a sudden sense of shame.

Here I was, schlepping my fancy tent and expensive camping equipment around in a very nice car, choosing to sleep outdoors for “fun”.  Among our group of friends, there were easily thousands of dollars worth of tents, sleeping bags, lanterns, air mattresses, mini-grills, camp stoves, thermoses, tiny espresso makers, coolers, tarps; not to mention the minivans and station wagons we’d bought to fit them all into (and this group are fairly modest campers by comparison).  And, worse yet, I’d complained about having to sleep outdoors on hard surfaces, in rain, getting dirty and bug-bitten; at any minute I had the option of going back home to my four walls with clean, hot, running water and a soft mattress.  Where I could close the door, lock it, and be safe. Camping suddenly felt like a farce, a purely first-world activity where people “rough it” for “fun”, then go back to their normal lives again, having achieved a moment of serenity in the Great Outdoors; or at least enjoyed a beer beside a campfire.  Granted, sometimes you have to sleep outdoors in order to remember what silence sounds like, or what the stars look like in a purely inky-black sky; but the exercise of going camping felt empty to me suddenly.  Some people are always “camping” and do not have a choice.  Am I not mocking them by attempting to live temporarily the way they’re forced to live every day?

It was certainly food for thought as we packed up the 3D jigsaw puzzle of our gear for the last time and said our goodbyes.  And when I arrived back home, I felt even more grateful for the abundance in my life.

August Camping Adventures, Part 4: Respite

After exploring Mackinac Island, we had a day to visit Colonial Fort Michilimackinac.  I enjoyed the period reenactment, complete with musket-firing demonstration, cooking demonstration, archeological site, and period dance.  Gaël was recruited into the British army, and given a gun and uniform. 

 

It’s a good dose of history lesson with a bit of silliness thrown in, all on the lovely shores of Lake Michigan.

Late afternoon we got back in the overpacked car and headed for Kalkaska, where our friend Regina grew up; she was staying with her mother for their yearly visit back to the U.S.  Jean-Philippe had left just a few days before to attend a music festival in Ireland, so it would just be Regina and her mother.  We were sad not to see Jean-Phi, but so happy to spend some days with Regina; as an extra perk, I would get to sleep on a real bed and do some very necessary laundry.  We cooked dinner together, had great conversations, went on a mini-hike in the woods (cut short by Gaël’s protests), explored the antique shops in the center of town, ate, drank, and relaxed.  Regina’s mom is so welcoming and easygoing, and treated us like family.  And as for Regina…well, let’s say that I really owe her after being hosted twice this summer—once in Poitiers, and once in Michigan--in the loveliest way possible.

I felt completely refreshed and ready for the next challenge when we left two days later.  We crossed over through Traverse City to the Leelanau Peninsula, and one of our favorite places, the Sleeping Bear Dunes.  We arrived in Glen Arbor around lunch time, then had time to buy some cherry wine, soda, preserves (and taste all the samples!) at Cherry Republic, the home of all things cherry.  The sun was shining, and we lunched on the patio there.  The afternoon was devoted to climbing the big mother of all dunes, and then exploring the Pierce Stocking Scenic Drive, with breathtaking views on this gorgeous cool and sunny day.  The sand is white, the Lake Michigan water is blue, and the inland lakes are as clear as swimming pools.  I’m sure it’s a shocking contrast in winter, but in summer, it seems like paradise.

We ambitiously hoped to make it to South Haven the next day, but stopped at a place near Manistee called Orchard Beach State Park campground.  It was crowded and lively, with very small campsites, but we got a place near the bathrooms and next to running water, so it was OK.  Fifty feet behind our campsite was the cliff overlooking the beach and the lake.  The kids went to take the stairs down to swim while Patrice and I watched the sunset from the cliff.  My timing, as ever, is off, and I only remembered to grab my camera as the sun was sitting low on the horizon. By the time I got back to take the picture, it was already gone.  I must have been a little overly emotional that day, because I teared up at having missed the opportunity, our last night in Michigan.  Or maybe I sensed something else; that night before bed I checked my phone and found out that a friend and former co-worker was going into hospice.  The stars were clear and bright, but it seemed cold comfort; I passed a long, tearful, and fretful night.

The next day was a driving day.  We had to make it to Devil’s Lake, Wisconsin—about an hour north of Madison—to meet up with our friends Saturday afternoon.  We broke up the driving with a stop in lovely Saugatuck; we shopped (Aude’s constant quest for the perfect souvenirs), looked at art, ate our last Michigan gigantic ice cream cone, and admired the huge yachts in the harbor.  It was a nice place to say our farewell to Michigan.

And in perfect ill-prepared style, we timed it just right:  we would be arriving around the bend of the bottom of Lake Michigan into the morass of Chicago traffic right at 5:00 p.m. on Friday.

August Camping Adventures, Part 3: Marvelous Mackinac

August was extraordinarily mild this year; September is giving it its vengeance.  As I sit gazing at my brown, crusty lawn and the baking concrete of the street in early September, I dream of our August in northern Michigan.  This was my third trip to Mackinac Island.  I had wanted to see the Grand Hotel since I saw the ghostly Jane Seymour and Christopher Reeve wander the halls of it in Somewhere In Time.  An island with a strong Native American history, some mystery, and no cars appealed enormously to my inner 17-year-old.  Plus, I adore red geraniums, the symbol of the island.

I finally got the chance to go when I worked for a bus tour company out of Chicago.  I was the junior/assistant/flunkie-in-training to the experienced tour director, and it was on the moonlit, rocky beach on Mackinac that the poor woman broke the news that perhaps my lazy-assed 22-year-old self was not well-suited for the grueling half-circus clown/half-adult babysitter job of tour director.  I swallowed the news with little remorse, but forever grateful that Mackinac Island was my last stop.  We stayed at the gorgeous Mission Point resort and had high tea at the Grand Hotel.  I was in heaven.  A friend of mine has since told me that she was one of the very few lucky people to have gone to college at Mackinac College during the three years it was open, the site of which became Mission Point.  When the college closed its doors and students had to enroll elsewhere, my friend had to prepare with a mid-winter standardized test in neighboring St. Ignace.  She had to get there by snowmobile!

My second trip to Mackinac was a couple of years ago, when my in-laws were visiting the U.S., and we did the Lake Michigan Circle Tour.  Severe tendinitis in my foot had left me in a surgical boot for most of the summer, so Mackinac Island was a long sit-down on a bench admiring Lake Huron while everyone else explored the island on bicycles or shopped the port area on foot.  Although I was envious, we still somehow managed to sneak by the $10 charge to climb onto the longest porch in the world at the Grand Hotel, and we enjoyed seeing the Wheelmen, a group of Victorian-era bicycle riders, and a 19^th century baseball game was in progress in the park as we strolled/limped by.

So, for the third time, I climbed onto the ferry and into the glorious sunshine that always seems to pour onto Mackinac Island.  I tried to explain to my niece why Mackinaw City was spelled with a “w” and Mackinac Island was with a “c”, but they were pronounced the same way.  I thought that a French speaker would understand a silent “c” at the end, but she still seemed a bit confused.  No matter, today we would conquer the island on bicycle, survive the August throngs of tourists, load up on fudge and ice cream calories, and enjoy the views from every angle.

We bypassed the horse-drawn carriage tour (it’s informative about the history of the island and fun, but all in English, which might be a bit challenging for someone just learning the language), found a hole-in-the-wall hamburger place for lunch, then set off to rent bikes.  The route around the island was surprisingly easy until we branched off to bike up to the center.  My legs and hips screamed in agony, and I walked my bike part of the way up, but I made it!  The hill down was a bit scary, but I felt like a kid again with the wind in my hair, dodging piles of horse manure and wayward tourists.

As we headed for the ferry at the end of the day, the skies opened up and it began to rain.  Mackinac is even charming in the rain, and our ferry ride went under the Mackinac Bridge to cross from Lake Huron to Lake Michigan on its way back to the mainland.

August Camping Adventures, Part 2: Dreadfully Unprepared

Some background:

1.           We are always ALWAYS unprepared.  For everything.  Even when we think we’re prepared.

2.          We’re camping minimalists.  Well, my husband is, and so I am forced to be.  And because we don’t have an SUV or minivan, well…space, or lack thereof, rules.  That means washing old and small aluminum plates and cups, instead of toting paper plates.  That means small camping chairs.  That means no beach toys.  That means 10 days with the same towel.  That means taking the tiny camp stove apart each time to transport it.  That means re-using instead of disposables.  How eco, you might say.  How quaint.  Truth is, even to get our minimalist gear into a Jetta wagon, it’s like a nightmare 3-D jigsaw puzzle.  To grab lunch on the road or a snack out of the cooler, we have to unpack and repack every time.

3.          Here is a picture of our car, packed to the gills, to prove my point.

It gets really good mileage, our car.  We might even save money on vacations, what with camping vs. hotels, re-use of our aluminum plates, and lower fuel costs.  If only it weren’t for the ice cream.  I looked at our credit card bill for the month, and we spent $53.72 in ice cream.  I kid you not.

I was bound and determined not to be unprepared this time.  After all, we had two days to prepare, my husband would be home during that time, and everyone could chip in.  We bought an extra tent, some new and nicer camping chairs, and a real air mattress and pump.  We cleaned out the camping box and replaced old items and added in fresh bug spray, fresh kitchen towels, fresh sunscreen, an all-purpose iron pot and some decent utensils.  We would pack up the car the evening before, and be all set to go early Saturday morning.

Trouble is, life got in the way, and we forgot about getting the house ready to be empty for 10 days, and we wanted some down time before getting on the road for so many hours, and our itinerary kept changing and changing…and on Saturday morning, we were bickering and unpacking and repacking the car, eliminating items, stacking towels and pillows in the space between the two backseat passengers, complaining about who forgot to buy ice for the gigantic cooler.

To say that my niece was a good sport was an understatement.  In my previous post, I admitted my fondness for the creature comforts (OK, really what matters most to me is just a real mattress and indoor plumbing, preferably closer than 50 feet away).  At 17, I would have been unbearably miserable, and probably would have made everyone else feel so too by the end of the trip.  But Aude seemed to bear up well to whatever new thing she encountered.  Starting out two hours late, complete with requisite bickering?  No problem.  Eight hours in the back of a small car with a 10-year-old?  “I’m getting used to long distances” was her response.  First night having to learn how to put up a tent in the dark with clouds of mosquitoes swarming and no light, since we forgot to replace the mantle on our ancient gas lantern?  All smiles, and how do I put up the tent, and please pass the bug spray.

The first night was spent in a campground in central Michigan.  Sites were small, but it seemed to be the party campground; the guy who brought us our wood had been spotted earlier wearing a balloon hat and carting kids on a wagon ride; there was a potluck and a DJ.  We just wanted to set up and get food. Aude’s aim to speak only English dissolved into us barking orders to each other in French.  As my husband understands somewhat my camping aversion, we have come up with a mutually agreeable distribution of labor:  he sets up the tents while I make a fire and prepare food.  Or dig something out of the cooler to make sure we don’t starve, which is closer to the truth.  We finally sat down to sandwiches and a makeshift veggie salad at 10:30. Exhausted, we sat around the fire until way too late, and Aude learned how to avoid scorching the bottom of her shoes on the campfire ring while chatting with us about her future life plans.

And then, comes the unprepared part.  You see, we didn't even think to look up the weather forecast.  Nope.  My husband and I would share a light comforter if needs be, but he had the idea he would get by on a thin wool blanket.  It's August!  It's hot!  Except when it's 48 degrees at night.  We spooned and shivered, thankful that at least the kids had thick sleeping bags.  We would need to stop at a store to get more protection from the elements.

We had to pack up at warp speed in the morning in order to make our scheduled stop in Mackinaw City.  We found a welcoming campground there, right on the beaches of lake Huron, with a nice camp store, pool, and hot showers.  We walked in Mackinaw City, found a camp store, and bought a sleeping bag.  We caught the tail end of a Native American Trading post reinactment.  We went back to the campsite late in the afternoon; the kids managed to enjoy the pool and Patrice and I went for a walk on the beach.  We had cold beer, night wildlife, a tiny-but-enjoyable campfire.  And I actually managed to make the camp stove produce a pasta-spinach-feta dish I invented on the spot.  If we bathed ourselves in bug spray, life was good.  We would set off for Mackinac Island the next day.

If we could get all the stuff back in the car to drive to the dock, that is.

August Camping Adventures, Part 1: My Dirty Little Secret

Yesterday was the first time we’ve Skyped with Aude since she returned to France.  She was yawning at 9:30 at night, and I have no doubt that she’s jumped right into school and social life with gusto since leaving last Sunday night from Chicago.  How could a month go by so quickly, and yet the beginning of the month seems like a lifetime ago?

My travel adventures changed drastically after I returned home from Europe at the end of July.  The first week was a blur of jet lag, laundry, and preparing for my friend Raigan’s visit.  She came with her boys down from her parents’ house in the Chicago suburbs; I felt so lucky to see her twice this summer:  once in her home and Frankfurt, and once when she made her annual trip home to the U.S.  We visited a mutual friend, we had long chats, we invited friends over and the kids ran around together like they had been friends forever.

Two days after she left we would pack up the car and travel north to camp for 10 days in Michigan and Wisconsin.  The last thing I felt like doing was packing.  I actually felt a bit sick when I pulled my toiletry case down from the shelf.  Again.

And…can I tell you my dirty little secret?  I hate camping.

I’ve tried to like it for a long time.  My parents and I never went camping together; my mother refused.  She grew up in a rural area and in a farmhouse that didn’t get electricity until she was 18 years old.  She insists that she was camping for 18 years, and didn’t consider camping as a vacation.  I didn’t feel like I was missing anything until my good friend in early high school years convinced me that I needed that experience:  sleeping outdoors, the smell of camp coffee in the morning, s’mores, campfires and all your clothes smelling like wood smoke.  That all sounded fine and dandy, so I bought a sleeping bag and a duffel bag for my clothes (which would double as my pillow—how outdoorsy I was!), and got myself invited on the family vacation to Door County, Wisconsin.  Becky’s parents had a customized van which they slept in, and Becky, another friend Carole, and I would sleep in the tent.  With flashlights!  And giggling!  Just like a slumber party, but outside in the woods!  My tent-mates made fun of my inexperienced packing (hair doo-dads to match my totally impractical outfits, especially; hey, it was the early ‘80s), but I was not deterred.  This would be absolute fun.

The first night we did all the things.  The s’mores over the campfire, the ghost stories, the pitter-patter of little animals’ feet in our campsite.  And then it started to rain.  Not just a little sprinkle, but a real, honest-to-god gully-washer.  When I realized a veritable river was running between the tarp on the ground and the floor of our tent—soaking every hair doo-dad, sleeping bag, duffel bag and inch of clothing on my person—the honeymoon was over.  I announced to whomever was listening that I would be sleeping in the van with B’s parents.  Everyone laughed.  I begged.  Everyone laughed harder, and then suggested I get some sleep in my soggy bedclothes.  We spent the next day at the Laundromat instead of the beach; we amused ourselves by buying Brides magazines and telling each other our families’ geneologies.

OK, so parts of it were fun.  Carole getting sunburnt everywhere except for my handprints on her shoulders where I had put the 15SPF sunscreen.  Making a life-sized sand mermaid on the beach, instead of the more traditional sand castle (the effect was even more outstanding when we found a cigarette butt to stick between her lips).  Standing on the picnic table after dinner, trying not to move or sneeze, waiting for the skunks which had invaded the campsite to leave.  My very first Wisconsin fish boil.  Early morning delectable cinnamon rolls from the neighboring bakery.  But it didn’t take me long to realize I could have had most of these fun experiences while sleeping on a real bed.

But I didn’t stop there.  Car camping expanded to the Rockies with my now husband, who did [or didn’t] propose to me over a beer in a lodge which we couldn’t afford to stay in; he also may [or may not] have proposed to me in the campground later.  Undisputed was the fact that we had spent a couple of very cold nights at 9000 ft. in a rudimentary campground while listening to bears rustle around outside our tent as we tried in vain to breathe and sleep. 

I was still trying to like camping when we did a six-day, 100-kilometer hike up and down the slave trails of Brazil’s Chapada Diamantina on our four-month honeymoon.  It was the kind of camping where you don’t have the air pump to pump up your jumbo air mattress.  It was the kind of camping where you might have to get up in the middle of the night, grab your tent, and run up the mountainside in the dark to avoid being swept away into the waterfall.  It was the kind of camping where you bathe in freezing cold mountain streams, where you can’t use shampoo or soap, where if you say you need to go to the bathroom, you’re handed a small shovel.

That trip didn’t endear me to camping either.  But I didn’t stop.

The closest I was to stopping camping was when we emerged from our tent in beautiful southern Illinois one morning, all proud of ourselves for taking our four-month-old baby on his first camping trip, only to discover a gigantic tick sucking the life-blood out of our infant, right there on his bald little head.

I didn’t want to go camping for a while.

But then a few years ago we met these wonderful people, all families with their kids about the same age as ours in our fabulous day care.  And they camp.  For fun.  Together.  And so, we have been camping together for a few years now. We haven’t stopped, despite our son sitting down in the campfire one year and getting third-degree burns.  We haven’t stopped, despite surviving rain and 100-degree temps.  We just keep camping.  As usual, we made our reservations with them in February or March this year for a few days’ stay at the campground at Devil’s Lake, Wisconsin.  And when Aude decided to come to the U.S., we knew that part of her adventure would be camping with us.  For better or for worse.

More camping adventures to follow.