By PAUL DELANEY
Staff Reporter
Enjoying the great outdoors has been a family tradition for, I guess, as long as I can remember.
There were tent trips to Osoyoos Lake when I was a little crew-cut toe head, not even in school. The strong smell of that old canvas umbrella tent still lingers in my mind to this day. So do the earwigs that I poured out of the box of sugar and onto my cereal.
The treks to go camping here and there across our area continued into my teen years when multiple families would gather along the banks of Deadman's Creek north of Kettle Falls.
With cattle loading pens across the road that allowed use of adjacent Colville National Forest land for grazing, this spot affectionately became known to one and all as Cow Camp.
Through the pouring rain on Memorial Day Weekend where we'd try to stay dry under a patchwork of tarps – again the canvas type, as this was long before those blue plastic ones that are as popular in the woods as are Starbucks on a corner near you – to hot and dry Fourth of July holidays where we carefully tended our campfire.
The nightmare was having an ember get away and burn down both our, and other's paradise.
I introduced camping to my wife of 30 years and she – along with our daughters – shared many of those Cow Camp trips. Growing up in Southern California, she used to tell me “camping” in her family was renting a motel on the beach for the weekend.
So car camping and sleeping in a two-person pup tent on a trek years ago that took us to Lolo Pass and Glacier Park for the first time one Independence Day Weekend was likely something of a shock. Of course maybe so was innocently setting up in the same campground as several dozen “bikers” – no, not the peddling kind but rather leather-clad Easy Rider types.
There was the night we shared their camp across from Lolo Hot Springs back over three decades ago, the sounds of the after-hours open-air keg party and our “friends” playing Frisbee over our tent until the dawn's early light are as vivid as is that old canvas smell.
Unphased from that experience, my wife has been a real trooper over the years when it has come to camping. Perhaps never more so than the five days we spent rafting the River of No Return – the Main salmon – four of which were spent in the pouring rain.
And as far as adventures like that being a holiday? In her mind they don't qualify. Stunning scenery and wilderness solitude aside, setting up and taking down camp every day, plus stuffing it all into a raft, isn't much of a vacation she admits.
She was, however, the motivation to us getting out to camp for the first time this year this past weekend. Of course, “camping” for us now crosses over a bit into the RV realm. We tow a tent-trailer or pop-up camp trailer now.
My parents are probably turning over in their heavenly sleeping bags, knowing their son sleeps on a mattress up off the ground when he “camps” these days. But so were they as they would stuff themselves into the back of the old Chevy under cover of a truck canopy, guaranteed to stay dry in even the most driving rain.
Of course traditionally our yearly initial outdoors' odyssey would come around Memorial Day weekend. But I think there might have still been snow on the camp trailer's protective cover then.
Our shakedown cruise took us out to some friends' property at Lake Coeur d'Alene. The biggest adventure was successfully backing the trailer up a hill, into a parking spot, and not over the bank and down the hill into their campfire pit and picnic table.
And it was good to know that we beat last year's maiden voyage that took place in mid-August. I know because that's the date on the steno-pad we keep in the trailer to remind us of what we needed to restock before the next trip.
Yes, we still need aluminum foil, No. 6 coffee filters and to check the battery so that we have lights, should we not have the luxury of the electrical hook-up our hosts have on their acre of land.
Our weekend in the woods was great because it took us away from all those nagging chores – finishing the retaining wall, painting the new doors, organizing for the garage sale that's been on the calendar for four years.
Instead it was serious relaxation. I mean for me really serious downtime bobbing off the beach in a float tube. Relaxed to the point of even falling asleep to the point our hosts noted an occasional snore.
It even meant jumping on board one of those personal watercraft gizmos – you know a Jet Ski – and go skimming across the largely less populated, and much more smooth southern reaches of the lake. All the time I was conscious of the broad brush that paints the operators of these craft. I think I would have gotten good grades from other boaters, both power and sail.
With electricity and running water at hand, camping – OK RV-ing – has changed a bit over the years. We both listened to and watched portions of the Spokane Shock arena football game at our friends' RV. But on the other hand, both Saturday dinner and Sunday breakfast were cooked outside. Food tastes better that way we're told.
But no matter how you go – of how you sleep – I'll still call it camping because it's still getting out into the fresh air. And wireless Internet hasn't invaded just yet.
Paul Delaney can be reached at [email protected]
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