I think this is my earliest childhood memory of camping with my family. My grandparents had a Winnebago and they took us to Gulf Shores for a week every summer. It’s was “grand kids week” and my parents would usually come down at the end of the week and we would move into the tent with them for a second week. I LOVE thinking about the fact that my parents do the very same thing with our girls. The Winne was so cool. My grandparents had two twin beds in their “room” and the dinette folded out for a double bed at the other end (seen below). The coolest part, to me, was that there were cabinets above both beds that folded down into a bunk. I loved sleeping up there, even though there was only about 18 inches between the mattress and the ceiling. And even though we know of at least two times that I fell out of that bunk and hit the ground. We spent most of our time outside: riding bicycles, jumping in puddles, visiting the nature center and building sandcastles at the beach.One trip in particular stands out in my mind. There were four grand kids at the time — me & my sister and our brother-cousins, Justin & Jared. We grew up living next door to one another and I seriously have very few memories where they aren’t included. At the time, my granddad drove a Silverado and the cab only held two people. The four of us rode in the bed of the truck beneath a camper shell. We could see Granmom & Pop through the back window of the truck and we communicated hunger and potty breaks via walkie-talkies. WHAT WERE MY PARENTS THINKING?! We rode on the interstate for 5 hours in the bed of a truck. I’m just lucky to be alive.
God bless Josh for loving the beach and the campgrounds as much as I do. If you marry into our family, you are pretty much signing those cushy condos away for life and committing to bath houses and lawn chairs. I don’t ever remember him complaining about how we vacationed. I do remember that I told him that first summer that I planned to read and lay in the sun for seven days. You’ll see that he learned to enjoy reading all day as much as I do!
2004 was the last summer we slept in a tent. Each camper has to have it’s own lot, but you used to be able to pop a tent on a lot with a camper. Josh & I were young and poor and it was nice to stay on someone else’s lot for our week of vacation. We had a box fan and only slept in there anyway, so it wasn’t such a big deal. That summer it rained. A lot. And one night I woke up and felt something on my face. It was the tent that was pretty much wracked because the wind was blowing so hard. The rain was so heavy that we couldn’t really leave the tent, so we laid there all night with our hands over our head to hold the tent up over our face. Josh very emphatically declared the next day that we would never go to the beach without owning a camper again. We bought a tiny little camper the next spring.
The summer after the oil spill in the gulf was another memorable summer. Sophie wasn’t quite 8 weeks old and Gulf Shores was still devastated from the spill. You could visit the beaches, but there was oil on the sand and the ocean was closed. The foliage was still recovering from Hurricane Ivan, so we didn’t have as much shade at the park as we were used to. It was hot and I was fat and miserable. We bought canopies and inflatable pools and literally spent ten days like this. You would think it was “the worst vacation ever”, but we had such a great time that summer.
We rented a camper for the next few summers, which was so great while we were trying to figure out what we needed long term for our family. We found a great local place with perfectly sized campers that cost far less to rent than a payment would be. We taught our girls how to love being outside — we had picnics for dinner, learned to ride our tricycle and loved being pulled around in a wagon. We played cards until midnight and ate ice cream sandwiches with one hand while steering our bicycle with the other.
Last summer, we bought a new-to-us camper that is such a great fit for our family. When we picked it up last weekend to prepare for Spring Break, I got excited all over again. I love the smell when you first open the door. I had forgotten how big it was when we pushed the slide out. The girls climbed on their bunk beds and were excited to find freshly washed polka-dotted sheets and blankets.
There are only two summers that I didn’t get to make the pilgrimage – my freshman year of college and the summer before Sophie was born. I think I complained more those two summers than ever in my life. I know camping isn’t for everyone, but I love that it means we can extend our summer vacations. The amount of money we would spend on a condo for a week could fund an entire summer in the campgrounds. We can camp for ten days and barely break $300. I’m sure there are days our kids will complain about how different our vacations look from their friends, but speaking from experience, I know these will be some of their fondest childhood memories.
