Ever since we formulated our ambitious plan for adventure, we have been asked a series of questions. All of them variations of, "Wha-......how on earth did you.....for heaven's sake....why?"
Good question(s).
I am not what you would call a "camper". When I was a child, my family went camping. Once. For one night, our family packed up our vehicle and drove to a park an hour away for our church's Family Camp. It was marvelous, hot cocoa drinking, wienie roasting, s'mores making fun. And then we went to bed. As it started to rain, my parents threw us into a tent and climbed into their dry conversion van with a warm, fold-down bed. The memories created that fateful night involve rivulets of rain oozing through the tent roof, soggy UNO cards, floating cheetos, and Frank Glaub's frown as he held his lantern under his sleep deprived face (creating horrifying crags and furrows) and instructed a throng of kids to go back to their tents and stop making racket in the woods since it was 3 AM. Why would we want to be in our tents? They looked like this:
Okay, so I didn't take a picture. But this is how I remember my one childhood camping experience. Basically, I do not have a secret past of rabid, enjoyable camping.
However, we currently live in Baltimore City in a huge, fantastic townhouse with two drawbacks. The first being we don't have a yard. When my kids would like to exit the house and play around outdoors, I say things like, "No. Someone might abduct you." Second, we live on a busy street:
(Also not my actual street, but you get the idea).
As a result, we like to be away from the house as much as possible over the summer. Between my husband's parents on Cape Cod and my parents in rural Illinois, we usually manage to spend much of the summer out of state. So when our friends who are trying to move to Burundi sent out an email asking if anyone knew of a summer rental for a family because a doctor told them to wait and leave at the end of the summer, I shot my arm way up in the air and said, "OOOO, OOOOO!" We said they could take ours and we would find somewhere else to be, for all of July and August.
Couple that with my husband's need to travel for work, my desire to see Yellowstone, and our penchant for making plans the day before, and you have a recipe for a magnificently ill-formed, on-the-fly, adventure.
Memories of epic proportions are probably going to be made. Even without Frank Glaub's lantern.
(14 days left until departure)
