I have blogged more than once about how I despise camping, unfortunately my wife romanticizes her childhood camping experiences and thinks our kids, while being miserable during the actual camping experience, will look back fondly upon it when they are adults just like she does.  That being said, I decided to take one for the team and plan a camping trip to end the summer.  However, this camping trip was going to be on a lake with a slalom course and I was going to bring my boat, it had all the ingredients for  a successful camping trip?

We ended up getting to the campground on Wednesday night.  My father in law pulled the fifth wheel Shirley’s grandparents bought in 1998 with Shirley and the kids.  I drove separately because I was towing my boat and I managed to beat everyone to the campground.  The particular campground we were at was run by Muskegon County so my expectations were tempered to say the least, however it was the only campground right on the lake.  When I arrived I was pleasantly surprised to see the campground was sparsely populated.  There were tents at one end of the campground (the slums) and there were a few campers and fifth wheels at the other end.  However, there was no one in the office and I didn’t remember which lot we were on so we decided to just pick the best one and hope for the best.  (turns out we picked the wrong lot but they let us stay on it anyway)

The weather wasn’t great that night so we didn’t have a campfire but we were able to get set up.  However, Big Al (my father in law) didn’t get one of the front jacks all the way down so anytime I moved around when I was sleeping it felt like the fifth wheel was going to roll over on it’s side.  (Obviously sex was out of the question for a number of reasons but that was one of them). I woke up at 3 am and couldn’t get back to sleep for at least two hours, I was beginning to deeply regret the decision to camp.  The next day the we got up and cooked breakfast and the kids camping acquaintance, who would later go by the nickname Benjamin Button, rolled in to our campsite (he was quite portly) and the kids within minutes of hanging out with him told them he wasn’t their friend and they didn’t like him.  My kids aren’t very discerning so for them not to like someone usually means they are incredibly annoying (I don’t even think Shirley liked him and she likes everyone), and this kid was.  While I was happy that the campground was 40% full the downside was that other kids were not readily available to play with my kids meaning I had to entertain them.

There was a playground that consisted of a slide, a set of monkey bars, and a volleyball court with a net that was 4 and a half feet high (exactly what you would expect from a campground run by muskegon county).  The kids and I along with Benjamin Button took a stab at volleyball ( I bought a volleyball at Walmarts that morning because Parker wanted to play it, or so he said).  The volleyball scrimmage lasted roughly 3 minutes and then it was on to the monkey bars.  Parker was all over them climbing up and down with no problems, Aiden on the other hand has the upper body strength of Manatee and needed my help getting on the monkey bars, the same could be said for Benjamin Button.  He asked me to help him on the bars and there were two things that popped into my head: 1. he’s really fat and looks heavy 2. he’s not my kid.  In a moment of complete lack of foresight I lifted him on to the monkey bars and it was like trying to hoist a bag of concrete over my head.

Benjamin Button would go on to ride his scooter shirtless and shoeless and crash right by our campsite rendering him completely incapacitated but still able to follow us around and bug the shit out of us.  However, the crash would happen after he  stalked our campsite as we were leaving for Silver Lake sand dunes and proceed to hang out by our trailer as we left instead of going back to the slums.    Fortunately he wasn’t there when we got back from silver lake and his family was set to head back to Ohio the next day.  Ultimately I ended up heading back home for the night so I could get a decent nights sleep and retrieve some of the things we needed from home.  I didn’t wake up once during the night and was completely refreshed by the time I returned to the campground. We goofed around a bit more and ended up going fishing with Benjamin Button bothering us the entire time up until his departure back to the Buckeye state.  He actually asked both Parker and Aiden as well as myself  to go back to his tent and get his fishing pole for him because he was too injured to retrieve his rod.  We just ignored him.

With Benjamin Button out of our hair we decided to launch my boat and take advantage of the all sports lake we were camping on.  The weather wasn’t great but that didn’t stop the Jansma’s from tearing it up on the lake.  We first took the kids tubing but they grew  dissatisfied with the tubes in less than ten minutes.  However we also had a wakeboard and knee board on the boat and Aiden was the first one to take a crack at the wakeboard, managing to get up for an extended period of time after three tries.  Parker was next and instantly began to negotiate some type of reward for trying to wakeboard. Being exemplary parents we immediately told him we had a deal and that he could get a toy if he tried.  After three pretty weak attempts he was back in the boat crying about how hard it was.  We decided to bring the boat in and hang out at the campsite hoping that Parker could get a nap in before we hit the Getty 4 (drive in theatre in Muskegon).

Eventually he fell asleep and was down for a couple hours sleeping so long that we ate hobo pies made on the campfire without him.  Ultimately he woke up just as were finishing dinner.  While he was eating the song “Old Town Road” came up for some reason.  I asked Parker how he knew about that song and he said his friend Greyson likes it.  I had never fully listened to the song but thought that one of the lyrics was “going to take my horse to the old hotel, going to ride it until I can’t ride anymore”  due to the fact that I think about sex 99% of the time I figured it was in reference to the singer banging a prostitute at a hotel.  Boy was I off on that one.  On our way to the drive in we attempted to pull it up on youtube and play it on my blue tooth in the car, the lyrics are much more innocuous than I had originally thought and the video is quite solid.  Shirley watched it once an Parker watched it twice.

(The next morning I woke up with Old Town Road in my head and couldn’t get it out, the song is good but not Jonas brothers “sucker for you” good)

The Getty 4 if you haven’t been is like being put into a time capsule, if felt like the late 80’s possibly early 90’s, it was great.  The only problem is they don’t start the movie until it is as dark as your closet with the door shut and lights off, so 9:45 ish this time of year.  This meant that the movie didn’t get done until 11:15, all the movies are double features so we could have gone from Angry birds to Toy Story 4 but instead we went back to the campground quite exhausted, so exhausted that I had a decent nights sleep in the camper.  (on the day of the year with the most sunlight I am guessing the final movie is wrapping up right around dawn)

It was already Saturday (I don’t usually say already about anything when I am camping, it’s usually “it’s finally”) and time was flying by a bit too fast.  I had arranged to ski the slalom course with a guy I knew from the lake and when I got back there was a guy at the beach of the campground who asked if I was out there skiing.  I told him I was just as Shirley rolled up, I asked her if she could pull me bare footing (She had almost killed me once when she pulled me before we were married  so obviously I was desperate for a driver).  She hesitated a bit and the complete stranger piped in saying “I can pull you”.  I responded “sure”.  (you are only going 40mph on water with no skis, what could go wrong?  A lot of things have in the almost 30 years I have been bare footing).  I showed the guy where  the driver’s seat was and we were off, well that’s how I was going to do it, but he suggested he take the boat for a brief spin before he actually pulled me bare footing.  I was hesitant because I didn’t want him creating waves but I decided a test drive was probably in my best interest.  He passed the test drive portion of the exam and ended up pulling me bare footing without any problems.

 

After returning from the barefoot run we made breakfast and then we did what good parents do when kids are disenchanted with something they already have, we bought them something to replace it with.  The tubes were just not working for Aiden and Parker, they were single adult tubes and the kids (and Shirley) wanted the flat two person tubes.  Shirley located an online coupon for one that could be utilized at the Dunham’s in Fremont.  I took the kids with me so that Shirley could tidy up the campsite.  Unfortunately, the Dunhams in Fremont did not have the two person tubes but I was not going to let that stand in the way of my kid’s happiness, I bought a four person flat tube. Game On!  After stopping at Meijers for alcohol, supplies, and Starbucks we headed back to the campground for a delightful afternoon, the kids tubed for six minutes, Aiden wakeboarded, and Parker tried to kneeboard, only this time we didn’t incentivize it so he gave up even quicker than when he tried to wakeboard.  While trailering my boat back to GR in a monsoon the following day wasn’t much fun, the trip was a success, by no means will I agree to buy a camper (that doesn’t mean I won’t come home someday to find one parked in our driveway) but camping once a summer is right up my alley.