Camping for the Non-Camper

Written sometime after the first weekend of May 2013.

As a prelude, I have served my time camping and earned my camper credentials:  one week each summer from 1969 through 1975 at Mar-Lu-Ridge, including one year when we camped out in the woods and dug our own pit latrine, one week of canoeing on the Shenandoah River, and one week of biking and camping along the C&O Canal, and weekend camping while I was a Girl Scout.  So basically, I have crossed camping off my bucket list.  Been there, done that: bitten by ticks and bugs, cooked over an open flame, slept on lumpy, rocky ground. I am over it.

Until my own daughter became a Girl Scout. . . . .

And as a Brownie bridging to Junior, went on her first overnight with her troop to Oak Springs with all of the mothers.  Indoor camping, which is not as posh as it seems.  Two inch foam mattresses covered in plastic on metal spring cot frames that creaked with every movement and guaranteed to make one feel twice one's chronological age, which is not bad when one is eight, but is hell when one is 50.  But mothers do things like this because we love our children and want them to have rich, full lives and a variety of experiences.

The first night at Oak Springs we cooked outdoors and had a campfire that night.  The next morning we used the house's kitchen to cook breakfast.  Flush toilets, running water, civilization.  A camping trip in the loosest sense of the word.

During this initial camping experience, we were hearing that next year we'll be outdoors and sleeping in platform tents.  Oh, joy.  Must we?

So here we are one year later and we're off to Camp Sacajewea.  Platform tents.  Latrines.  Obstacle courses.  Zip line. Hurray, hurray, my vertebrae and knees were just a-quiver with anticipation.

But we got a perfect Saturday, blue skies, warm sun.  It was a great day to be getting up at the crack of dawn to head out to WaWa to pick up lunch and head to the meeting place.

Our campsite at Camp Sacajewea was Smoke Rise, with six or seven platform tents, a little cabin with a refrigerator and a couple of picnic tables and right across the path from the latrine.  So far, not so bad.

After putting our gear in the tents, we went off to our first activity, the zip line.  Another Item I had crossed off my list - Steve and I went on a zip-line tour in Costa Rica.  Fortunately as the troop's designated photographer, I took the pictures.  Except my own kid, who was worried about becoming dizzy, so I was not pushing her.

After lunch we went to the obstacle course, but we arrived there early and the girls ran for the tire swings.  Luckily they were able to have a blast swinging before the obstacle course overlord arrived and shut the fun down by telling them that they had to be properly supervised.  We had three mothers and our troop leader.  I'm a nurse practitioner, and these kids have been on swings for years.  Seriously?  I was practically chewing the bark off of a tree so as not to explode.

The fun part of the obstacle course was seeing our troop of 4th graders beat a troop of 6th graders at a game where they all had to stand on a log, and then rearrange themselves by birth date or alphabetical order without their feet touching the ground in three minutes.  It was my Thea who came up with the idea of crawling on their knees, holding their feet up, to speed up the process.  The 6th graders were annoyed, but the obstacle course overlord deemed that no rule had been broken so Troop 71602 won.

Later that afternoon we went to the Lego Robotics activity and then we went back to our campsite for jewelry making and dinner preparation.

The troop was divided into two groups - one making dinner and one making breakfast.  For both meals, they did an amazing job, they worked together, did all the preparation without a lot of prodding or supervision, and both meals were great.  Chicken or veggie parmesan for dinner with bananas stuffed with marshmallows and chocolate chips for dessert., breakfast burritos for breakfast.  Campfire cooking has improved since the time I was in scouts.

For as gorgeous as the weather was during the day, it got a little chilly at night.  A lot chilly.  The kind of chilly that makes it hard to change into your pajamas.  Fortunately, in addition to our sleeping bags, I brought extra blankets for Thea and myself - either they could be used underneath the sleeping bags or on top.  Platform tents have slats that allow cold air to seep up through the floor, but Mrs. Church and her years of camping experience brought plastic tarps to put over the floor.  Layers of long sleeves, sweatshirts and sweatpants and wool socks and dreams of the electric mattress warmer on my half of the bed helped me survive the night. 

After breakfast, we packed up, went for a short walk to toss a stick or a rock into the pond and say what we liked best about the camping trip and we went home.