Most people keep searching for life when it’s really right in front of them. You just have to go out and live it. Just reach out and pull it around you. Wrap yourself in a blanket of stars. Pat Loehmer
I can’t remember a time, as a kid,
that we weren’t planning a family camping trip. Every June, as soon as school
was out, Mom and Dad would pack up the pickup camper, along with my sister Pat,
me and the dog, and we would go somewhere. The Black Hills, the Badlands, the Gulf of Mexico, the Blue Ridge Mountains, historic Virginia, or the peaceful
Upper Peninsula of Michigan.
When Mom and Dad bought the pickup
camper in 1967, the entire continental US seemed to suddenly be accessible. I
have only vague memories of many of those earlier trips, and I think that some
of those memories were fabricated in my head from the stories the family shared
and the pictures I’ve studied.
What I do know is that Pat and I
would lay on the bed in the camper above the cab of the truck and watch miles
of highway pass before us. Our imaginations knew no limits. When there was
nothing of interest outside that picture window, we played with our plastic
horses, allowing them to run the imaginary pasture on the bed.
When we arrived at whatever
campground where we were spending the night, our imaginations continued to make
up adventures. Unless, of course, we were some place so fantastic that our
minds could not top it. Lookout Mountain in Tennessee where we were certain we
saw seven states. The deafening roar of Niagara Falls. Geysers spewing steam at
Yellowstone. And nearly being left behind in Canada. I know why to this day I suffer
from wanderlust. I can’t stay in one place for long.
1997
Shortly after we returned from the
trip to Las Vegas in 1997, Pat spied a pop-up camper for sale in someone’s
yard. She called me as soon as she got home.
“What do you think about getting a
camper, a pop-up trailer? It would be so nice, don’t you think?”
I honestly don’t remember going to
look at it; I think I may have said, “Go for it, and let me know what I owe you
for my half.”
It didn’t take us long to try it.
Our first trip was to a rustic
campground in the Nicolet National Forest just past Eagle River. Luna and White
Deer are the names of the two lakes which border the campground, one on each
side. The lakes are small, so small that they don’t allow motorboats, which is
ideal for us. It meant peace and quiet.
We chose a site along White Deer Lake.
This site was also right next to the outhouse, but neither of those were
reasons why we picked it. We settled on that site because Pat felt she could
best back the camper into it.
Almost right after we got the camper
set up, it started to rain. We took cover inside and played cribbage. And said something
like, “Ha, ha, ha! Let it rain, let it rain. No more getting wet in a tent. We
are high and dry in a trailer. Ha, ha, ha!” We were pretty full of ourselves.
We also had a full schedule of camping
trips that year.
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