Welcome to Thursday Coffee Hour. This is an open topic thread so help yourself to the goodies and sit a spell and let us know what is new with you. Growing up in a large family we didn't do the vacation thing often. Trying to get five kids ready was a bit of a problem especially since for many years I got car sick even on small trips. Fortunately I out grew that problem. One thing we never did was go camping. The idea of my Mom roughing it like that was hysterical to contemplate. I've actually been camping once in my life and it was a comedy of errors. Follow me below the Kos-de-fleur for the reason why I don't camp any more.
In the late 70s my brother Eric and I decided to take our vacation together. We lived in Northern California and decided to go up to Victoria, British Columbia and then down through Yellowstone and back home. The trip up was fine. On the ferryboat ride from Vancouver to Victoria we discovered that I didn't get seasick which is a major accomplishment. We also discovered a large PacMan consul on deck and spent much of the trip chasing little dots. That probably explains why we are cat people who shine laser lights for our cats to follow.
I loved Victoria and it was there that I first saw the Walk/Don't Walk signs that had the green person walking and the red hand held up in the stop gesture. Those had not reached the United States yet. I loved the old fashioned look of the city. I had my first British tea at the Empress Hotel. I fell in love with the Butchart Gardens.
The trip down was uneventful except for my brother wanting me to find directions in the atlas. I can do many things but read a map is not one of my abilities. My Dad would always do the same thing to me hand me a map to find something. The problem is by the time I found where we were we had left there several miles ago. How could I find where we were going to if where we were kept changing? Dad would pull over find it immediately and head on leaving me to fold the map. Now if you want someone to fold maps I'm your lady. I'm especially bad at maps the first thing in the morning. Actually early morning anything is hard for me unless it is drinking coffee. Eric looked over to where I was struggling with the atlas and told me we were no longer in Montana but Wyoming. I said, "Don't be silly Wyoming is next to the Canadian border." Okay I'm not really up on Geography early in the morning and the fact he was majoring in Geography didn't help much.
Our Aunt Hazel loved camping. She was always up for adventure. She let us borrow some camping gear including her tent. It is much easier putting a tent that has the structures on the outside up in the middle of a well lit living room then it was in the dark. We had arrived where we were to camp after sundown. We fumbled with the tent and eventually managed to get it up. Now onto dinner where we realized neither one of us really knew how to make a campfire. We found out that Eric's windshield washer fluid made a great lighter fluid. We survived dinner and didn't burn the place down which I think was a major accomplishment.
One of the things we failed to bring with us was a pump for the air mattresses. Somehow I ended up with the air mattress with a leak in it. Every couple of hours I would wake up and blow the silly thing back up. During the night I had an unwelcome visitor. I am highly allergic to spiders. I woke up with a bite on my forearm that was the size of a half a softball. A side trip into town for Calamine lotion was needed.
Yellowstone was fantastic. Somewhere in this mass of books and stuff I have the pictures. The rest of the vacation was mercifully spent in hotels. Eric decided that going back he would go by the route that went from Delta, Utah through Ely, Nevada. We learned another lesson there when his fan belt broke and he didn't have a replacement. Finally a car stopped and two guys and a gal got out. She knew more about cars then the three men. She told Eric that wrapping a Band-Aid around the broken belt wouldn't work. They took us to the nearest town and we got a garage to come and fix the car. Dad couldn't believe we headed off on a long trip without spare belts but then he was a Boy Scout Leader and was always prepared. I have never seen stars like I did that night before and have never seen them like that since. There were no city lights cutting off the view and it was one of the most beautiful sights I have ever seen.
So that was my first and only camping trip and why I consider roughing it now to be a three star hotel with attached swimming pool and Jacuzzi and a good restaurant.