Ah, summer. The time of year when families pack up the car and head off for adventures in the wilderness. I mean, who doesn’t love camping?

Me.

Frankly, I could live the rest of my life without camping again and be perfectly happy. Now, if you want to set me up in an RV or houseboat, I’ll go to the wilderness and be at one with all the critters…as long as I don’t have to sleep with them. I admit that I do not like sleeping on the ground, mostly because I don’t actually get any sleep. And when I don’t sleep, I’m kind of a bitch. There’s also that overactive imagination of mine that hears and sees creatures of the night creeping around my tent just waiting for me to stick a foot out. I have had relatively few camping experiences in my life. As an adult, I think I’ve gone camping twice, once in Yosemite and once by the American River. The Yosemite trip was tolerable because my boyfriend engineered a somewhat comfortable sleeping area in the bed of his truck. The American River camping trip was fun because there was a lot of alcohol involved, so I didn’t care about all the frogs on top of the tent until we woke up the next morning. But the most memorable camping trip took place when I was around five years old.

We went with several other families to Eastman Lake, north of Fresno, CA in the Sierra foothills. I have fond memories of this trip, though some of the specifics have faded over time. It’s been close to 30 years since the trip…Yikes! God, I feel really old now…

But I digress. Here are some of the most memorable moments of that trip.

The Kangaroo Rat, Part 1

Several families went on this trip, some stayed in their RVs, while others shared tents. The men “roughed” it outside on chaise lounges, though I think that was just an excuse to stay up late drinking beer without the disapproving looks of their wives. My mom, sister, and I were sharing a tent with another mom and her daughter. These were the days when I fell asleep as soon as my eyes closed. At some late hour of the night or early morning, my sister says, “Mom, there’s something in here.”

“No there isn’t. You’re imagining things. Go back to sleep,” says Mom. A few minutes later…

“MOM!! Something just ran across my stomach!”

My mom grabs a flashlight and shines it around the tent, mostly in an effort to prove to my sister she was imagining things. But what does she find hiding in the corner? A kangaroo rat staring right back at her! The other mom wakes up, sees the glowing eyes, jumps up and down from foot to foot, and starts yelling “Holy Shit! Holy Shit!” Outside we hear the men say, “Be quiet so they think we’re asleep.” We all run from the tent and knock on the doors of the RV sleepers, asking for asylum.

The Chaise Lounge

One of the dads was a pretty heavy guy. The men had decided to sleep out under the stars in lounges or on the ground. He decides to stomp on the lounge a few times to make sure it’s level. When he finally goes to lay down…he busts right through the chair with a resounding thud, followed by the laughter of all the other men watching him. I’m guessing beer was involved.

The Kangaroo Rat, Part 2

My sister and I had found other accommodations for the rest of the trip. My mom decided to sleep in the back of the station wagon. My brother got a pretty bad sunburn and was sick, so he stayed in the station wagon with my mom one of the nights. She woke up to the sound of crunching and rustling plastic. She wakes up my sick brother and asks him if he hears that sound. He crankily answers “No.” She hears it again. She grabs the flashlight and shines it towards the front of the car. Who is looking back at her? The kangaroo rat. He’s sitting on the steering wheel eating graham crackers we had used that night for smores. She wakes my brother up again and says “That rat is in the car. Help me get rid of it.”

“Mom, I’m sick and I don’t care if there’s a rat in the car. Take care of it yourself.”

“Let the light of my eyes guide you”

One of the boys on the trip was a year younger than me and had always had a crush on me. He used to chase me and my friend Maureen around his house on the days his mom was giving us swim lessons, always trying to kiss us. His family had a huge RV that they came up in and was one of the locations where my sister and I slept after the rat incident. One night my sister and I are walking into the RV to go to sleep, and out of the darkness I hear “Erin, let the light of my eyes guide you.” This kid was four years old and already had the cheesy pickup lines down.

I wonder if that line ever worked for him?