The family and I just got back from Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore - ranked The Most Beautiful Place in America in a Good Morning America contest last year. Yes, there are thousands of beautiful places in America. This one, though. This one....
...first off, it's just up the coast from my home. So that's a plus. We pack the car with some sleeping bags, a tent, some pots ant pans, and a plastic container filled with canned beans and pancake mix, and off we go. Half a tank of gas to get there, and then $12 per night at the DH Day campground.
That last part I really want to stress: $12 per night.
TWELVE DOLLARS per NIGHT.
As my wife said today "Well....we took the kids on a little weekend vacation and we can still pay mortgage this month."
The US National Parks system is an absolutely astonishing resource for all of us. Now, technically Sleeping Bear Dunes is a national LAKESHORE, not a National Park. But still, the same adoration applies for national parks, lakeshores, campgrounds, seashores...
...It floors me that for less than $180 including travel and food a family could take the kids and family to a breathtaking four day vacation.
Play cards. Play chess with the older boy. Make pancakes on an open fire every morning. Swim in the lake every day, play by the water, try to make arches with the rocks you find in the clear waters. And at night, with the sound of the waves in the background, while laying on soft sand, wait for the sky to get dark enough to show the children the Milky Way.
Last night I think a bear got into camp. I awoke in our tent to gentle taps of rain on the ruberized nylon above. I heard something rattling around off in the distance. Then the distinctive sound of zippers as tents opened. Flashlights all over like searchlights. Then some people yelling and banging things together. Then quiet.
Two days before, the campers next to us came by and offered us wine. Some of the best sparkling wine I'd ever tasted from a small winery in the Leelenau penninsula. This camping neighbor of ours and his lady had come up to the area from Chicago to go on a Michigan wine tour and was so pleased with a bottle of wine he came over to us and offered us a taste. We drank fine wine by a camp fire, and their dog late, late, late that night as all of us were in our tents responded to the yip yip yip call of coyotes with a bark.... My wife whispered "Our neighbor's dog is talking to the coyotes. He's saying 'not over here you don't!'"
The children visited the campground's art center at 11:00 Saturday morning. A ranger helped a table full of young children from the campground make art projects...and each night at 8 the rangers gave talks and presentations, and circulated through the campgrounds to find places with evidence of children. They invited the kids and parents.
Twelve bucks a night.
$12.
Two weeks of that is $168. Cheaper than low grade rent.
For food bring some beans and a pan. Brown sugar and salt and pepper and maybe an onion to baked-bean them up. Instant pancake mix and cheap corn-syrup syrup. Bring Ball jars full of loose popcorn and a bottle of cooking oil and a pan with a lid. Cook everything over an open fire. Potatoes and carrots stay okay in a car trunk without ice. Cook them in oil in a pan for lunch. Dinner. Breakfast. Peanut butter and cheap white bread. Granola bars. Remember...for cleaning: soap is made from lye. Lye comes from ash. Use the fireplace ash with sand to clean your dishes.
Just go.
If you can do it. If you can get the time. Go out and do it. Use the national resources you have at hand. You may be low income...but you deserve a good vacation. Go out and do it if you can. If you can get away. Take the kids out for a few days and just focus on them. Take the spouse out for a few days and just focus on her. Eat together. Breathe the air together. Sit quietly together in the darkness, in the crickets and cicadas and observe bats in the sky at dusk.
These are things our national parks system offer to us. And it's good for your sanity, and your family, and your soul.