Family Camping

We loaded up the car with the tent, cooler, plastic containers with supplies and eats, the dog, the kid, all our bikes, and loads of other odds and ends and drove, all Beverly Hillbillies-style, to this campground called Lake Sylvia, near Montesano, and while the lake was really more of a pond, the place was quiet and lovely and our campsite perfectly adequate; we unpacked, set up, drank beer and took a little walk with the dog, then enjoyed an evening around the fire snacking and communing with nature.

Just as we were retiring for the evening, the rain started, and continued all the way through the night, loud enough at times to not only wake you up, but to keep you from falling back asleep again.

In the morning, it was still all drizzly, with no sign, really of letting up, so instead of a camp breakfast, we drove into town for country vittles at the local diner, where we decided that discretion was the better part of valor—or, at least, summer vacationing—and that rather than tough it out in the wet and cold, we’d return home, set the tend up in the lawn to dry, and maybe sleep out if we felt like it.

But back in Seattle, it looked like rain in the evening, too, so we moved the tent inside, to the living room, where we turned off the internet and all the lights, built a fire in the fireplace, and camped indoors.

For my money, it was practically as good as real camping; all the windows were open, so we could hear birds n’ shit, and with the fire crackling in the hearth, it almost sounded like we were out in the woods, without those pesky bugs, or those neighboring campers who had to start inflating their air mattress with the battery-powered compressor at 7:00 in the morning.

I missed making coffee over an open fire, but not that much.