WHO'S NOT OF CAMPING - Opening chapter (Scroll down for previous chapters)

      Every year my wife would plan summer vacations for our family.  If there’s anything that will draw families closer together, it’s not family vacations.  But they’re an excellent stress test.  Everyone who passes the test gets to remain in the family for another year.     

     At the end of each school year, Connie had already planned our summer stress test.  Included in the test were the Backseat Turf Wars, which the kids trained for during the school year.     Also included were the Tent Wars, considered epics by our family and all eyewitness reports.  The Tent Wars may have been the greatest spectacle since Cecil B. DeMille’s Ten Commandments.  The tent and I clashed over starring roles.  After several scenes, I tried to return the tent and get a refund.  But the store’s return policy wouldn’t accept tents that had anger management problems.    

     If this were not sufficient stress, I would char-broil my uncle’s camp lantern, or we would listen to our son tell how he was capturing some terrific video with our friend’s video camera, when the battery pack got loose, and jumped over the side of a cliff.           

     Of course, the highlight of any vacation is capturing it on film.  Unfortunately, most of ours refused to be captured.

     One summer we were touring Old Fort Edmonton in northern Alberta, Canada.  My wife was on point with the camera, getting some of the best pictures she had never taken. That’s right!  At the end of our tour, she discovered there was no film in the camera.  It provided us with some excellent bonus stress. The kids and I threw in a little extra by reminding her that it wasn’t a self-loading camera.  We also made a few other light-hearted comments, which I won’t mention here. 

      As we left the park, the kids walked behind me.  I walked slowly since I could find no one to walk behind.  Once our fears of bodily harm subsided, we joined Connie in the car.  Driving off, I was certain we had lost a trip planner.  But after a couple days, she was speaking again. 

     When we got home we hung several empty picture frames on the wall, to commemorate our trip.  They drew more attention than the pictures we had captured.  All the frames were labeled with historic sites of Old Fort Edmonton.  Friends looked long and hard, especially hard, at the empty frames.  

     “These are from our trip to Edmonton,” I explained.  “They were taken without film.”

    
     “Very creative,” one of them said.    

     “I like what you’ve done,” said another. 

      They could only imagine what Old Fort Edmonton looked like back in the 1800’s.

     Returning from vacation with the entire family was considered an act of God, worthy of a call from the President, inviting us to the White House to honor our achievement. 

 

 

To be continued...check back soon