Have you had the experience of going camping and sleeping in a tent? Personally, I never even went camping at all until I was in my twenties. My husband came home from work one day and said some guys from work invited us to go camping with them and their families over the fourth of July weekend. I told him we were going to have to go buy a camper first. He said: “No, we were going to buy a tent instead.” Silly me, I should have known that you can’t pull a camper and a boat at the same time and we had to take our boat so we’d have something to fish out of!
So we went out and bought ourselves a brand spanking new tent, a camp stove, a lantern and two sleeping bags. We were all set then because we already had the boat, a pair of water skis, a tube and plenty of fishing gear. Of course we also bought plenty of food and water and snack stuff and a few fire crackers.
On Thursday, we all loaded up our gear and food and headed out to Bill’s Marina at Lake Tillery to spend the weekend. I didn’t know a thing about setting up a tent but since everyone else but one couple were camping in tents, there were plenty of experienced hands to help out. It wasn’t long at all before there were four big tents and a camper set up with tables, chairs and stoves in between our camp sites; so we could then get down to the real business of having a good time. Since altogether we had three boats, the guys could take two boats and go fishing and leave one for us gals to use.
I remember one day in particular when three of us gals took our boat out to a quiet little cove. Not to fish, of course, but so we could have some nice smooth water for skiing. The biggest problem we had after we reached our destination was driving the boat. You see all of us were as blind as bats at a distance and we only had one pair of glasses between the three of us. So we decided which ever one of us was driving the boat would use the glasses because we felt like they needed them the most!!!
We also had some excitement the next day when one of the guys was riding the tube. A couple of the guys riding in the boat dared the driver to see whether or not he could throw the guy off the tube. The poor guy on the tube didn’t stand a chance of hanging on while the boat driver cut figures eights until finally off the rider goes at about a hundred miles an hour. That poor guy skipped across the water like a rock – Bump, Bump, bump and finally went down under the water. We didn’t think he was ever gonna come back up. Just about the time we thought we were going to have to send a search party for him, his head finally popped back up. He said later on that he felt like the water in that part of the lake must be sixty feet deep and he saw at least 59 feet of it.
We rented a pontoon boat on the fourth so we could all ride together to the fireworks they were having at another marina there on the lake. I decided I was going to let them pull me there on our water skis and that’s an experience I’ll never forget. I didn’t think we’d ever get there but it was still a lot of fun skiing up between all of those nice boats parked around waiting for the fireworks to start. It’s a really beautiful sight to be right there on the water with those fireworks falling all around you.
Just because we were camping didn’t mean we didn’t eat well while we were there. We cooked bacon, sausage and eggs for breakfast and on Saturday night we all bought steaks to grill. We ate those with all the trimmings and then since we had brought our ice cream churn we decided to make homemade ice cream for dessert. We filled up the churn and then plugged it up with a long drop cord. It seemed like
we had just started it up when from out of the blue we heard the rumbling of thunder. In no time flat that storm was right over it. The lightning was flashing, the thunder was rolling and then the heavens just seemed to open up. I don’t just mean it rained. It absolutely poured. We had a camper cover shell over our truck (not to sleep in, of course, but to hold all of our stuff so we could lock it up) so my husband and I sailed right over into the back of the truck and we took that ice cream churn right along with us.
It was as dark as pitch in the back of that truck except when the lightning kept lighting up the sky. We kept hearing bodies fall over into that truck bed along with us but we couldn’t see who all was in there. When that storm finally passed over, we couldn’t help but laugh because everybody else from our group ended up in there together. It seems everybody’s tent leaked, including our brand new one and everything was wet and needed to be dried out; and aired out.
When I look back at those camping trips we made, I can’t help but remember those good times we had with our camping buddies. But then my mind also remembers all of those rocks I tried to sleep on up at Lake Tillery and the fact that my sleeping bag seemed to always find at least a dozen of them.
O yeah; now I remember why I haven’t been back!!!!