Stories from my mother #4 - Camping

Our first camping experience was in 1960 when we flew out to Arizona to my sister’s.  We had the 4 oldest children with us from ages 12 to 3-1/2. We left the youngest back home with relatives. My sister, Alice, had borrowed a car for us and also sleeping bags. She had her husband, Joe and 2 children, 7 and 12 with her. We had a 6 ft. tent for changing clothes and a big tarp for sleeping on. She had prepared some food in a cooler and had been buying canned food .

The first day we set off in late afternoon, as neither  car was air-conditioned, and we had to drive across the desert. We arrived at a campground about midnight outside of San Diego, spread the tarp on the ground, unrolled our sleeping bags on it and went to sleep. The next day we went o San Diego Zoo and  then the Pacific Coast. There we met some of Joe’s relatives and went swimming in the ocean. It was fun in the big breakers, but there was a big undertow. From there we headed up the West coast, finding convenient campgrounds where we could camp and see the sights, starting with Disneyland which was quite new, then Knott’s Berry Farm. When we drove, the kids would ride in different cars, wherever they decided to.  One campground we stayed at was in San Simeon, planning to visit Hearst Castle. When we found out how much it would cost for all of us, we decided it wasn’t in the budget. We prepared all of our meals to save money. We drove up further on the coast and camped at Big Basin State Park. There we camped under the big Redwood trees. The wildlife were quite friendly. We could feed the deer by the visitor’s building.  We fed a raccoon grapes out of our hands in  our campsite. I put Dawn to bed in one of the  cars. I had difficulty sleeping as I thought a deer might try to lick the salt off my face.

From there we headed inland for Yosemite. We camped right in the valley. The campsites were very close together. We stayed there a couple of days to see all the sights. At that time they had a garbage dump nearby and everyone would go watch the bears feed at it. Also they had a firefall. At Halfdome they lit  a bonfire on top of the mountain, and then pushed the embers off the top; it was quite a sight. Common sense prevailed soon and they stopped doing both of those things. We drove up to the top of valley and headed out the East entrance. We drove down toward Las Vegas. Alice thought she knew of  a campground, but it got later and later and we didn’t find it, so we finally took a sideroad  in desert, threw the tarp on the ground and unrolled our sleeping bags. In the morning we went until we found a gas station where we washed up, then headed into town. We found the Silver Slipper where we ate an  English Hunt breakfast for 99 cents each, the only meal we purchased on our whole 2 week trip.

From there we headed south, stopping at Lake Mead and Hoover Dam, then at several early Indian settlements on the way back to Casa Grande.

  

After  finding out that camping was the way to go, the next year we bought a 9x9 umbrella tent with an extension to fit over the back of the station wagon. The 5 kids could sleep in the tent and Vernon and I could sleep in the back of the wagon. We couldn’t depend on it not raining in the northeast. We went to Cape Cod  and primitive camped on the property of friends for a few days, then went north and camped in the backyard of a friends house one night on our way to NH. There we found a family campground and stayed for a week. Everything went along fine.

The next  trip we went to upper NY state and camped at Howe Caverns. We didn’t attach the tent to the car, we just slept in the back  of the car with the tailgate down. We put all our supplies on the picnic table. During the night we heard noises and turned the flashlight on the table to see a small  bear with his paws up trying to get at the food. We noises an scared him away.

There had to be a better way to travel-camp, so we bought a pop-up camper; that was much easier. It was just an empty box, that had extensions that pulled out to make a bed. It had bunks on one side, so the 4 youngest slept on that side, and Vernon and I slept on the other. Alan slept on the floor in the middle. Vernon made a kitchen that fit in the back of the car, and the cooler went in the trailer when we traveled. Since we had to take out the third seat of the car to fit things in it, one child sat on the floor of the back when we traveled. 

Our first trip was down the Skyline Drive.  When we would stop for lunch, we just pulled the cooler out of the trailer and pulled down the tail gate do get at the kitchen and every thing was handy.