A Camping Weekend to Remember

I heard the forecast for the coming weekend…..HOT. This took me back to a camping weekend we had taken years ago. I started looking through our old photos to find the ones we had taken on that trip.

I found the folders that contained pictures of this camping trip. It was to Lake Shetek State Park, MN, back in 2007.  At that time we only had one son living at home anymore. He wasn’t sure he wanted to come along with mom and dad, but we assured him he could take a good book along and if we did something he didn’t want to do, he could stay back at the camper and read. He decided he could live with that and took along the Ted Dekker book, Blink.

Our pickup was not working properly at that time so we borrowed my dad-in-laws’ red Dodge Dakota pickup, to pull our fold-down camper. Fortunately the AC worked in it; as the weekend we chose to go turned out to be cooking hot.

We had purchased a small outboard motor at an auction earlier that year and had a friend who had a flat-bottomed boat that we could borrow.  We were set for a weekend of fun!

We set up the camper, purchased our weekend fishing licenses, collected the boat from the friend and headed out onto the lake. The boat was built for people with very short legs.  Mine are short…..but were not short enough. Sitting on the bench seats that boat had; put our knees fairly close to our noses. (The next day we rented a V-bottom boat from the state park. It was much easier on the knees and back.)

Once we got around a certain point on the lake,there was not a hint of a breeze. My son decided to cool off by hanging one of his legs out of the boat.  Needless to say this rocked the boat that was already riding pretty low in the water. My husband hollered at him to get his leg back in and got the very dry response, “What’s the matter dad…..doesn’t it feel very stable?” He then proceeded to wiggle around enough to really rock the boat.

Later, looking at the map of the lake we noticed it was very shallow and only 8 foot deep at most parts. If we had gone over we could have bobbed up and down off the bottom till help arrived!

The fish were biting, but the heat was unbearable and we were slowly melting into sweatballs, so we headed back for shore. This took us a long time as our bargain motor seemed to keep cutting out. We kind of coveted those boats with the 25 HP motors that were speeding past us.

Once back at camp we squished into the pickup cab (which in a Dodge Dakota is not very roomy) and headed for the camp store a couple miles down the road. What we found there were these foot long Mr. Freezes……they were the best thing I have ever tasted on a hot day.

With the AC running full tilt we made our way back to the campground, sat in the pickup (with it running so we would stay cool), and finished off our Freezes. As we sat there, we started to laugh as we pondered how ridiculous we must look, three people, squished in a pickup cab on a hot day, eating Mr. Freezes. We were soooo close to heading back to the store to get a few more.

The next day was cooler and we had opportunity to do a little hiking.

Lake Shetek State Park is a beautiful place to visit and to camp. My son later told us it had been one of the best camping trips he had been on. I am not sure if it was the freedom we allowed him or the Mr. Freezes.

I do know it does not take a lot of money to have a bunch of fun and make some great memories. We have found when things don’t always go smoothly (heat, tippy boats, and testy motors) some of the best memories are made.

End of the Day

 

 

Your greatest memories aren’t always
about where you are
or
what you were doing.
Sometimes
it’s more about
who shared that moment with you.
Nishan Panwar