How to Have One of the

 Best Vacations of Your Life 

Americans want to get out of the house.  

   

We want to hit the road, travel somewhere, "blow the stink off ya' " as my mother used to say when we kids had spent too much time inside. 

With borders closed around the world, your bucket list trip to Italy is out of the question. In fact, even renting a room in Wildwood, New Jersey, has some latent dangers. Are motel bedspreads and comforters washed after every guest? Does the carpet look like it has been through several plagues? 

Ongoing viral infections through 2021 are predicted. This pandemic has shortened our wander leash ... or has it?

"No!" I say from inside my four-man, Coleman dome tent. "We can always camp!"

RV, trailer, or tent camping assure we sleep in our own germs, use our own toilets (possible even when tent camping), wash in our own sinks, keep our viruses in the family. This is not a time for staging mixers with the community's microorganisms.

America is returning to its pioneering roots, but the Conestoga and covered wagon have yielded to  RV's with state-of-the-art kitchens, flat screen televisions, microwaves, ice-on-demand from double-door refrigerators, and plenty of beds, hidden under tables and couches. It's called glamping. We know we "can't take it with us" when we die, but Americans have found every way to "take it with them" on the road.

My son, who works in the RV industry, said it is experiencing an unprecedented 60% rise in sales, thanks to America's desire to get on the road and sleep in their own germs. Glamping in a luxury RV may be a great option for a pandemic vacation, but for many of us a camper or tent are the way to go.

Experience has taught our family the joys and values of camping. 

In the early '60s Dad launched my decades long camping career. I was 12, so, initially, camping seemed like more work than necessary. I was annoyed with carrying water to cook, chagrined with heating water to wash, and further annoyed with 5 of us in sleeping bags, jammed shoulder-to-shoulder and butt-to-butt in our umbrella tent. Perhaps it is in just such circumstances children learn flexibility and gratefulness whatever the situation.

Our maiden adventure was to the Great Smokey Mountains National Park. Signs for safety with bears were everywhere. Dad slept with an ax, locked the food in our car, and lay expectantly all night while bears snuffled around the campsite. That was camping trip #1. 

Dad's specialty on the
road - grilling hot dogs.

Even with all the inconveniences, I realized, camping was a way to see the world on a shoestring ... and have some wonderful adventures.

"Shoestring" vacations were the operative words when, as a single mom of a 4 and 6-year-old, I realized that if I were ever going to give my boys some adventure and take them to see our country it would have to be in a tent.

A two-man pup tent was big enough and cheap enough. Peanut butter sandwiches made menus easy for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and off we went each summer for the next 10 years. In those days, we could camp for under $10 a night at a walk-in site. We camped in every major park and visited most points of interest between Northeast Pennsylvania and Little River, South Carolina, where we collapsed at Pa and MaMa's house.

Chincoteague and Assateague, Williamsburg, the Blue Ridge Mountains, the Cherokee Indian Reservation, the Outer Banks, the Smokies and more ... horses, bears, snakes, Indians, the ocean - this was living adventure for a single mom and her boys.

Our Cross-America van.

The official and formal end to our family camping career came when the boys were 14 and 16. Summer jobs loomed for the college bound, so a final, big bash campout was planned. Pa and MaMa were included. I purchased an old conversion van in the Paper Shop, a local listing of used items for sale. The van, already clocked at 90,000 miles, needed tires and lacked air conditioning which became an issue in Death Valley. Undeterred, the 5 of us set off across the United States in pursuit of as many national parks as we could find. 

The trip would cover over 10,000 miles in our 50 days on the road. Below this blog is a chronological list of the parks, forests, monuments, and cities we visited ... a list I can only remember because of my detailed scrapbook of photos and brochures. The southern route took us west to the Pacific, up the Pacific coast into British Columbia and Alberta, south into Montana, and a final swing across the northern states. 

The van had a pull out bed in the back which we reserved for Pa and MaMa during the entire trip. The boys and I slept in our tent, the 4-man dome ... easy up, easy down. Sometimes we froze at night, like when we camped near the base of the glacier at Lake Louise, British Columbia, and sometimes we baked, like in the high desert near Tucson, Arizona. 

Daily, we made memories: the "Going to the Sun" highway in Glacier National Park, Montana; a

In a snow field.
Glacier National Park,
Montana.

solitary walk through the Muir Woods in northern California; driving through Death Valley in the Southwest with the windows up (in our non-air conditioned van because MaMa had some crazy theory about keeping it cool inside); exploring the food stands in Juarez, Mexico; and walking, always walking, the trails in Yellowstone, the Sierras, Yosemite, the Grand Canyon.

This was the adventure of a lifetime, a forever family memory, an epic journey.

The result: the family was still talking after 50 days of camping. And ...  both of my sons have made camping a major activity for their own families. Parenting 3 children each, Bryan and Trevor have graduated from the tents of their youth to RVs. They still love finding beautiful places in America to camp, and the joys of sitting around campfires at night have never been lost. We are into our 4th generation of family campers.

Ken Burns says, "Our national parks are America's best idea." Truly. And they are also America's way to point us to God, for the Creator's fingerprints are evident everywhere in nature's beauty and glory. 

The boys and giant Sequoias.

Horace Albright, one of the founders of the National Park System, said, "The parks are something more enduring than we are... they were designed by God ..." 

Our lives are brief, but in the great outdoors we see continuity. Stand on a glacier, under a giant Sequoia, or on a Grand Canyon overlook. Problems dwarf in the face of God's majesty and power. Hot springs and geysers bubbling from deep in the earth, Mount St. Helens witness to the inner power, towering pines in rain forests of the Northwest ... all display an awe-inspiring majesty no man could manufacture.

These wonders take us out of our circumstances and self-absorption. We see ourselves as we really are: a small part of God's great and magnificent creation. Scripture attests to God's hand in it all: "For since the creation of the world God's invisible qualities - his eternal power and divine nature - have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that people are without excuse." (Romans 1:20, Message)

On the arch above the northern entrance to Yellowstone, the purpose of the park system is stated, "For the benefit and enjoyment of the people." Enjoyment, inspiration, a God-encounter ... the vacation of a lifetime awaits. A pandemic can't stop that.

I'm reminded of a World War 2 song my dad often sang on the road: "Pack up your troubles in an old kit bag and smile, smile, smile!" So gather your camping gear and kit bag, spend this winter planning your cross country route, and get ready to SMILE.

With a tent and some time, my family has seen America, and in its beauty, we have seen God's hand.

Lake Louise, British Columbia

You can too. It is unique, powerful, and breathtaking beyond imagination ... a welcome and crucial reminder of who and what we are.

On Layton

but encouraging you to 

"blow the stink off ya'," go camping,

and see America.

Places of interest, national parks and monuments visited on our 50-day cross-country adventure:

1. Opryland and the Grand Ole Opry, Nashville, Tennessee
2. Memphis, Tennessee
3. Dallas, Texas
4. Hot Springs National Park, Arkansas
5. Carlsbad Caverns National Park, New Mexico
6. Guadalope Mountains National Park, Texas
7. El Paso, Texas
8. Juarez and Nogales, Mexiso
9. Silver City, New Mexico
10. Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument, New Mexico
11. Tombstone, Arizona, National Historic site
12. Saguaro National Monument, Tucson, Arizona
13. Casa Grande Ruins National Monument, Arizona
14. Tonto National Monument, Arizona
15. Montezuma Castle National Monument, Arizona
16. Sedona, Arizona
17. Petrified Forest National Park, Arizona
18. Painted Desert National Park, Arizona
19. Walnut Canyon National Monument, Arizona
20. Grand Canyon National Park, Arizona
21. Sunset Crater National Monument, Arizona
22. Hoover Dam, Arizona-Nevada
23. Las Vegas, Nevada
24. Mojave Desert and San Joaquin Valley, California
25. Sequoia National Park, California
26. Yosemite National Park, California
27. San Francisco, California
28. Napa Valley, Sonoma, Mendicino, California
29. Redwood National Park, California
30. Mount St. Helens National Monument, Washington
31. Mount Rainier, Washington
32. Vancouver and Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
33. Glacier National Park, British Columbia, Canada
34. Banff National Park, Alberta, Canada
35. Lake Louise, British Columbia
36. Calgary, Alberta
37. Waterton-Glacier International Peace Park, Montana-Canada
38. Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming
39. Cody, Wyoming
40. Custer State Park, Wyoming
41. Mt. Rushmore National Monument, South Dakota
42. Badlands National Park, South Dakota
43. The Dells, Wisconsin