Summary:
Essay discusses a personal experience during a camping trip to Petoskey State Park.
It is a tradition that is as old as my life in years; the weekend family camping trip to Petoskey State Park. One of these trips I can recall quite well. When August 1st rolled around, my siblings and I spent numerous days packing and making sure we had everything for our trip. Mom was over-cautious as always and wanted to make sure we packed everything that was necessary. She created a checklist and checked each item off as it was packed into the mini-van. "Got to be sure we don't leave anything behind", she said; we just rolled our eyes and continued, a little annoyed at her over-pickiness. When it came time to clean the 1982 white and beige striped camper with canvass roofing and pull out beds, she began to watch over us with hawk like vision, just waiting to spot her prey, this, in our case, would be some un-swept dirt or some dust we missed. My dad, however, was the total opposite. As we were getting ready, he was on the couch watching TV, football to be exact. My mom would barked at him to get his "blank" moving which resulted in continued TV watching, but now with suitcase packing on the side.
Soon the tedious task of cleaning and getting prepared was finished and we set out on the 2 ½ to 3 hour road trip. If you ever imagined how crazy monkeys acted while trapped in a small cage then you have an idea of how we acted as we drove to our destination. It was always my brothers job to bug my sister non-stop until we arrived. In turn, it was my sister's job to scream and crab non-stop and my mom's job to yell at my brother to quit or he would wish he stayed home. Of course, she would have had better luck threatening a wall than my brother. He just brushed the threats off as if they were crumbs from the cookie that he was eating. The threats never worked and the only time he stopped was when the car ride was over and we pulled into our campsite. We got out of the van that whiffed of mourning breath and breathed the fresh air. The air smelled like smoke from nearby campfires, pine from the tall evergreens that towered overhead like skyscrapers in New York City, and a touch of fish smell since we were by Lake Michigan. After we were done sniffing the air like bloodhounds, we began to set up camp. The first order of business was to pop the camper up. Since it was so old, we had to do this manually. My brother volunteered to crank it up, trying to prove how strong and manly an eight year old can be. With a lot of grunting and a lot of "I can do it Dad! Leave me alone!" he finally got it up. Next came the tent. This was too difficult for my brother; even if he thought he was king, so my dad and I were the ones who set it up.
With our camp set up and our appetites in full force, we set out to get some dinner. We drove around Petoskey until we found a local restaurant that we hadn't visited in all the years that we've been camping. We soon found out why. First of all, we were the only people who decided to eat there that night. With the restaurant completely empty (empty like a football stadium when it's not football season or empty like most stores on Christmas day) we sat down in a small booth and ordered. The one positive thing about being the only people there was that we got our food fast, or at least we thought it was a positive thing. That changed when we tasted the food. I can't speak for the rest of my family but by the look on their faces, they disliked the cuisine as much as I did. Here's an example of how bad it was. I ordered battered dipped shrimp and what I got was battered dipped batter. There hardly was a shrimp present except for maybe a few pieces and even then they were about the size of sea monkeys. After this catastrophe of restaurant dining we decided to go back to our camp and make a fire. Usually when we make a fire, we roast marshmallows and make smores but as it turned out, even with all the planning, we forgot the gram crackers and marshmallows. With nothing better to do we went to bed.
I woke the next day and to my shocking surprise I found that it was raining. Since all the plans we had today involved the outdoors, such as going to the beach and walking around town, we had nothing better to do than sit inside the camper and play cards. As we played numerous card games and listened to the thunder crackling down like cannon blasts, we over-heard the radio state that it was supposed to rain like this for the next four to five days. My mom then gave us the options of what we could do. We had to choose whether to stay and bare the weather out, even though it was pouring rain that rivaled Niagara Falls, or pack up early and go home. Not wanting to stay and get even more wet than we already were, we decided, with great disappointment, that it was best to pack up and leave. We began the 2 ½ to 3 hour trip back and if you ever imagined what crazy monkeys knocked up on tranquilizers were like than you have an idea of how our ride back went.
This is the complete article, containing 958 words
(approx. 3 pages at 300 words per page).
