Tuesday, May 17, 2022 Vacation Memories

I’m running short on time today, so I thought I’d share with you the first answer to my Storyworth questions (the Mother’s Day gift I got from my kids). The question was: Where did you go on vacations as a child?

When I was very young, my parents took us to a cabin on Tripp Lake. My only memories of that place were that the refrigerator was really loud and kept me awake at night and the lake was very shallow for quite a distance from shore. No doubt that was part of its appeal to parents with many young children.

My father worked with a fellow who owned a cabin on Palmer Lake, which was near where my dad’s parents lived. For a time we went to that cabin for a week every summer. It was isolated and very rustic. The water in the kitchen sink operated by a pump that had to be primed. There was no indoor plumbing, either – you know what that means. I count it a badge of honor that I learned to use outhouses so early in my life, but I never used them without feeling a high degree of nervousness and distaste. The cabin at Palmer Lake had a loft which was where us kids slept. Eventually all six of us siblings were there, so I’m sure that bedtime was accompanied by plenty of shenanigans. My oldest sister probably was accorded the privilege of sleeping down in the main living room. We had a dock and a swimming area, but it was really more of a fishing lake. The swimming area was filled with disgusting weeds that clung to your legs and made it hard to touch bottom because that meant standing on them. Ugh. I learned how to dive off that dock, a trial for everyone concerned. My method of learning how to dive started with me telling everyone that I was going to dive off the dock. Then I would run down the dock and stop at the edge, saying, “Wait!!” What seemed so possible at the beginning caught up with me as a nearly impossible task at the end of the dock. After that, I’d remonstrate with myself for being such a chicken and I’d start the whole thing over again. I think it was several days before I finally got up the nerve to fling myself off the dock head first in some semblance of a dive. For years I got teased about that “Wait!” that came with every attempt. It’s sort of symbolic of how I approach trying new things, though.

Other than that, our vacations were either to Duluth, where my mother and father had grown up, or to campgrounds at county and state parks. With a large family on a schoolteacher’s salary, vacations were done on a budget – we always camped. Dad would circle each campground very carefully before picking a site – it had to have plenty of shade and nice level ground, and also isolated from others, if possible. Being near the bathrooms was a plus. Mom and Dad had a pop-up tent trailer which slept 6, and the older kids usually put up a separate tent. We hardly ever left the state of Minnesota (see previous comment about budget vacations), but had a lot of fun. I do recall one camping trip to the Chicago area. Here are a few specific (but not necessarily fun) vacation memories:

1. The infamous camping trip to a campground in the area where we live now. It was raining when we arrived, raining when we set up the trailer and tents, and it rained unrelentingly for at least two days. We’d been trapped in our tents the entire time playing cards. My dad, who was not easily defeated, finally gave up and gave the order to pack up, take the tents down and go home. Worst Camping Trip Ever.

2. Dad took just me and my older sister on a camping trip and I got sick with a fever our first night out. We were in a campground occupied by some young men who were partying pretty hard and very loudly late into the night. In my sleep, I overheard all the ruckus which included my dad going over there and confronting them, but my fevered imagination turned it into a very threatening scene in which my dad had to fight them. In reality, I think he did go over and ask them to pipe down, but no fight ensued.

3. The glorious trip to the Boundary Waters with my dad and two sisters. That was one of my favorite vacations! Paddling through pristine lakes, the sound of the oars dipping in water, the loons at night, taking our drinking water right out of the deepest parts of the lakes, doing portages, finding driftwood to bring home for our mom to put in her gardens, the simple meals, reading Mary Stewart’s books about Merlin, giggling with my sisters at night…all memories I cherish. God bless my dad for being willing to take a trip like that with three females.

That’s the story for today!

I’ll probably…you know.