Camping Trip

Noel says she likes my boyhood stories. Sometimes I remember just snippets of episodes, but sometimes I remember more-coherent narratives. So, time to mine the memory....

My mother liked to keep a bit of distance between her and the rest of her family, but she always admired her family's zest to take their families camping. On their occasional visits, my aunts and uncles showed us lots of photos of kids in canoes, kids in forests, and the like. That looked appealing.

In theory, my father liked camping too: closer to nature, and all that. In 1969, we purchased a Datsun station wagon: a thrifty vehicle, but perhaps suitable enough for the family to go camping with. So, in the summer of 1970 (when I was age 13) it was time - past time, really - to go camping!

But first, we had to get supplies. From somewhere we got a big canvas tent, and a Coleman stove. I planned a big itinerary, to hit all the major national parks of the Southwest, in just four days. There was only one possible impediment: our inexperience.

Time management is always a big problem with big auto trips. First night was supposed to be at the Grand Canyon - but it was 400 miles away, to the west, and we didn't quite grasp how far away that was. Following Highway 66/Interstate 40, we first stopped off in Gallup, and drove through Petrified Forest National Park, but we lost time by doing so. Sunset happened before we got to Flagstaff. So, the first decision was, do we press on to the Grand Canyon, or camp outside of Flagstaff?

We drove through a crowded campground - the only easily-available one I could identify on my roadmap - but there was no space for us. Reluctantly, we pressed on to the Grand Canyon.

At Grand Canyon Village, there was no space either. Tourist season was in full swing and every campsite was full. But, at 11 p.m., we finally located an undesirable spot at the distant end of a trailer park and pitched our tent. We ate a hasty meal, and collapsed.

At 6 a.m., a stupendous, alarming clatter and whine woke us all up. Panicstricken, we stumbled outside. We were camped adjacent to the Grand Canyon Heliport! Every tourist in the world wanted to see a Grand Canyon sunrise from the air - right now! Whether we liked it, or not, more sleep was not to be had.

We spent the bleary-eyed morning staring blankly into the big void of the Grand Canyon. But we had to press on. So, we drove into Navajo and Hopi country to the east. We ate a gut-wrenching meal at the Dairy Queen in Tuba City, Arizona, and pressed on.

We stopped to spend the night at a gorgeous spot in Monument Valley, just south of the Utah border. Beautiful place! But in the middle of the night, a fierce thunderstorm hit the area. A portion of the floor got wet, and part of the tent collapsed. Not much sleep this night! But the real danger we didn't appreciate until the next morning. A late-arriving camping vehicle parked in the space next to ours while the storm was raging. The vehicle almost ran over the collapsed portion of our tent. The driver couldn't see well and never knew we were there.

By the third day, we were getting the hang of the rhythm of the road. Sleep-deprived, we pressed on, to Four Corners National Monument, and then to Mesa Verde National Park, in southwestern Colorado. Nothing traumatic transpired there: we were grateful for the scenery, and the chance to maybe look around. But the fourth day arrived too soon, and we had to press on south, back to Albuquerque. Never got that close to nature. Nature could have slapped us in the face with a big fish, but we would have never noticed in our state of numbed exhaustion.

Nevertheless, this 1970 trip was useful. It was a sort-of trial run for the biggest moving adventure of our lives: the abortive move from Albuquerque to San Diego to Santa Fe and back to Albuquerque in the summer and fall of 1971.

This song was on the radio during the Big Camping Trip of 1970 - the hottest song of the summer of 1970. To this day, this song reminds me of the anxiety of finding a camping space in the dark and crowded forest north of Flagstaff: