My life before Sam did not involve camping. It involved a great deal of traveling, loads of family time, an omnipresent poodle, and plenty of outdoor activities....but my family never slept in tents....or any other portable habitat.....unless you count sleeping in the car a form of urban camping....and if that counts, then my sisters and I are true camping connoisseurs.
The Air Force took our family all over this wonderful country and we spent many hours of the day, and night, on the road. In fact, if you blindfolded me and sat me in the back seat of an 80s model Audi, Volvo, or Honda, I could identify the car in which I am sitting based on leg room, degree of angle required to achieve a comfortable "window lean", and volume setting necessary on the radio in order to hear the music in the back but to still be considered tolerable by the front seated parental units.
In the world of car camping, my sisters and I are ninjas. We can eat an entire meal on the tops of our knees without the loss of a single fry. We can mentally convert mileage to actual drive time in seconds with an accuracy rate of 99.9%. We can outfit ourselves in the perfect travel gear that will allow for even body temperature regulation and pedal comfort taking into account outside climate along with maternal vehicular thermastat control. We can sleep for hours in a 2 x 2 space and know exactly how to cradle a pillow in the strap of a seatbelt to prevent nuchal rigidity and optimize spinal alignment. And don't even think about challenging us to a game of "I'm Thinking of an Animal".....we WILL take you down.
Some of my favorite childhood memories were made while driving between the West Coast and the East Coast. I'm sure it was hard for Mom and Dad, but that's not what I remember at all. I remember singing along to Dad's Selected Favorites (a collection of music ranging from The Beatles, to Don Williams, to African music, to the best of Broadway, and more); I remember bidding farewell to one state as we crossed the border and greeted a new one ("Goodbye, Mississippi....Hello, Alabama"...and it never got old!); I remember Mad Libs, playing M.A.S.H., Stuckey's ice-cream, asking for the key to the outdoor gas station bathroom, walking "Cacti" (said poodle) at truck stops, and laughing, laughing, and more laughing!
Since marrying Sam and being introduced to the world of outdoor camping, I have found the need to develop a new set of skills, and BOY has it been an adventure! I'm definitely a ninja-in-training when it comes to this kind of camping.....just wait till you hear some of these stories....
"We do not remember days...we remember moments"
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