Camping

My family has camped as long as I can remember. We have an awesome group of friends that we always go with in July and do some small trips on weekends occasionally, and when I was younger we always did a long week as our family vacation. Times have changed but camping is still in my blood. Driving home from Algonac last weekend with the girls I was thinking about all the campers my family has owned and all the problems we had with them. Well really it was only with one camper did we have major problems. Each and every time we got a new camper it was bigger and so exciting.

I don't remember the first one that much. I know we borrowed my dad's cousins pop-up for our very first trip. Then we owned one very similar to it, with the hard sides. The first one I really remember is the one that we had so many problems with. It was the one we owned for the longest time. Now I know we owned two Starcrafts but we may have owned three. There was a blue phase, that pop-up went through everything with us. We use to push the beds in just a little further to stuff our swimming noddles at the edges. We use to pop it up in the garage most of the way and pack for our long trip. One time we had it popped up too much and closed the garage door, leaving a huge gauge in the roof. We also didn't lock the door when we traveled so we could get our cranks out when we got home, we just would lay them on the floor by the door. Well we learned our lesson about locking the door when a truck drove by honking its horn at us on I-75. The door has popped open who knows when. When my dad pulled over to close it he saw we had lost both our cranks. Lucky for us the trailer store was going to stay open til we got there to get new ones. From then on we kept the cranks in the truck. This pop-up also had the little wheel ripped off it. Dad had forgotten to crank it up once the trailer was on the truck. That was not a fun moment. A week before our annual trip with the group mom and dad decided it was time to get a new trailer. Not sure why so soon to our trip, I'm pretty sure we had most of the trailer packed already for the trip but one week before we left we unpacked the blue one and packed the new green trailer. The green trailer wasn't with us long, maybe four years or so and I was sad when we came home from our July trip and they told me it was time to take pictures of it to sell. That's when my parents upgraded to the trailer with fold out wings. I haven't slept in the trailer much, now I sleep in a tent. See they upgrade once we all leave; don't all parents?

Yet no matter where I sleep I always have fun camping. It is in my blood. My friends and I have mostly all decided we're going to camp forever, and be just like the group I grew up with.