Our Big Spring Adventure

Almost thirty years ago, my husband and I, packed our soon to be one year old, our five year old, and a tent into our Monte Carlo and traveled to an army corp. of engineer’s park for our first camping trip.  My son ate his first peanut butter and jelly sandwich on that trip.  My friend Denise fed it to him, and in those days neither of us considered that he might be allergic to peanuts. It was a different time.   At that time, campsites cost about nine dollars a night and $75 would buy all of your groceries and gas for the four day trip.  

Every now and then I stumble upon the group photo we took that day.  There were about fourteen of us there. For many years, that group of people camped together several times each summer.  We cooked together, ate together, and played together.   We built strong friendships. Our children played like siblings.  As the children grew and ventured off in the campgrounds, I worried about not being right with them.  Good advice from one friend joked, “Campers don’t want more kids; they have no place to haul them.”  I learned that campers do tend to watch out for one another. 

Over the years, for different reasons, the group grew smaller.  Children grew up, jobs changed, and interests changed.  My family grew through a tent, two tent campers, a travel trailer, and after the kids quit camping, two fifth wheel campers.  It seems backwards to me that the less people there were, the bigger the camper became.  To be honest I enjoyed the pop-up camper years the most.  Those early years with all of my friends and family topped everything else.

As things seem to go, the more time you spend on something, the bigger your dreams become.  As campers, we peeked at the “old people” in motor homes and dreamed of someday being able to travel and camp.  A few years ago, we started tossing around the idea of a motor home seriously.  (You know what age group that puts us in, right?)    I vowed that if we invested that much in a camper, we would travel further than the state park down the road to use it.  Although we do use it at the state park down the road, this post is about our first trip out of West Virginia, our home state.  Sadly, we travel alone, without our friends.