Camping- How we Got Here and Why Mema and Papa are Hitting the Road
Mema’s parents didn’t do much camping when she was younger. Her dad liked to go to the lake fishing for the day and riding around in the boat but wasn’t excited about sleeping out in a tent. Once her father past away her mother and she started doing more camping. At first it was always in a tent with a sleeping bag and an air mattress. Mema was in Girl Scouts and her mom helped out on the Girl Scout campouts. Then every summer Mema and her mom would head to Guerneville and camp at the Russian River with her sister and family. By the Mema had reached her teen years they would camping most often in a pop-up camper with her brother-in-law and his family. Their favorite place was Silver Lake in the mountains of California.
Papa’s parents had a trailer when he was growing up and they would go on camping trips to Yosemite or the beach. One of their favorite places to camp was Memorial Park in California. His dad would pull the trailer up and Papa’s mother would follow in the truck. Papa’s dad would leave them at the campsite and go back to work all week, coming up on the weekend to spend time with them. When it was time to go home he would drive the trailer back and Papa’s mother would follow. One time Papa’s dad stopped to check on something in the trailer. He didn’t know Papa had gotten out of the car and followed him. When he was done he jumped back in the car and pulled off leaving Papa on the side of the road. Luckily Papa’s mother and sister were just a short distance behind with the truck and saw Papa on the side of the road and picked him up. When they got home Papa’s mom asked his dad if he knew where Franklyn was. He told her asleep in the backseat of the car. But then he looked and saw he was missing. He was worried until he saw Papa in the truck.
Once Mema and Papa got married we started going on camping trips together. Often it was in a tent with sleeping bags. We camped mainly in California and Oregon. Sometimes we were able to borrow Papa’s parent’s trailer or his Aunt’s trailer and we would enjoy having a bed to sleep in. We used the trailer to go to the beach and even to Disneyland. On one trip to Disneyland we were going up the Grapevine, a very steep hill, pulling Aunt Violet’s trailer when suddenly the transmission gave out and we were going backwards down the hill being pulled by the trailer. Papa was able to get to the side of the road and a cousin came and towed the trailer to the campground for us and the car was towed to the repair shop.
After Papa joined the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints we decided to take a camping trip to Utah, Colorado and Nevada. We stuffed the car with everything we needed and loaded in our only two children at the time, Franklyn and Bill. There was hardly room for them. The children sat close together in the back seat and somehow one of them managed to kick his brother in the eye. We stopped and threatened to leave them in the Nevada dessert if they didn’t behavior. They were well behaved all the way from there to Salt Lake City. When we got to Salt Lake we pitched our tent and went to see the sites. While we were enjoying ourselves a huge wind and rain storm came in and bent the poles and tore the tent down. We were on a tight budget and ended up spending the night in a rundown hotel until we could get a replacement tent. By the end of our trip we were running out of money and we ended up eating at a pizza place and ordering the boys a small pizza and us one all you-could-eat salad to share. We spent a hot night in Las Vegas where we sweltered in our tent and got home to find our house had gotten infested with fleas from our dogs. Both boys came home with lice in their hair. After that we weren’t too excited to go camping. We did take a tent trip with our four children to New York, Niagara Falls and Washington DC in 1991. Tent camping was not something we wanted to do on a regularly.
In June 1999 we rented a motor home to go to our son’s wedding in Washington DC and then spent some time exploring before returning home. We really enjoyed our trip and began considering buying an RV of our own.
It wasn’t until Christmas of 1999 that the decision was made to buy an RV. We had moved to Tennessee and were far away from our family in California and had taken many cross country trips crammed in a car driving straight through in 48 hours, only stopping at rest stops for a short nap. Right before Christmas Mema’s sister called to let her know her mom was not doing well and she needed to come out as soon as possible. When Mema and Papa looked at how much it would cost to fly all of them out to California they decided it would be better to finally just buy an RV. We bought a Georgie Boy Maverick Class C motor home. It was just a year old and didn’t have a lot of miles but we spent the next 9 years putting miles on it and seeing the country.
Then in 2008 Mema and Papa sold their RV. We tried tent camping trip to the beach but were miserable and decided once again tent camping just wasn’t right for us. Taking cruises became our new favorite way to vacation. Then 2020 hit and the global pandemic COVID and it became impossible to cruise. So in the summer of 2020 we rented an RV and went camping once more.
Renting the RV rekindled our desire to see the country and visit all the National Parks. As we were approaching retirement the decision was made to buy an RV and spend a couple years or more traveling the country. In September 2021 we purchased a Coachman Mirada Class A motorhome and were ready to hit the road. We still had almost a year to retirement but we began taking trips as we prepared to eventually move into their RV fulltime.
Leave a Reply