The best summer vacations ever

Growing up in a small town, I spent the school year running around town, doing "urban" things. There was the movie theater, the skating rink, the Boy's Club to fill up free time with. Home was 3 blocks from downtown if I got messy.

But summer time was different. Summer time was when I became someone else. Climbing trees, swimming in the lake, bare feet, smelly fish, woods to wander trough. I liked being dirty in the summer.

I learned to love the outdoors on camping trips with one set of grandparents and at my other grandparents' cabin on Campbell Pond (more like a small lake). These were days of freedom. My parents would be working and I was in the hands of my grandparents. They knew kids should get dirty, scrape their knees, have fun.

Grandparents S would camp all summer, mostly at Rend Lake. Weekends all the family came out and pitched their tent nearby. All the cousins (17) ran in a pack and terrorized the campground. Well, we at least disturbed the neighboring campers tranquility.

On Sunday, the parents went back to town and the lucky kids got to stay. That was when the real fun happened. Now there was room in Grandpa's boat for a kid or two to run trot lines with him. Up early, out on the lake in the dark, it was almost mystical. I didn't know that word then, I just knew I wanted to go.

Walking the shoreline looking for treasures was another favorite activity. Bare feet on wet sand or squishy mud between your toes. A dip in the lake without going to the beach was a no-no if the parents were around. But under Grandma's watchful eye, we could walk out in a cove far enough to duck under and cool off. I can remember my cousin T and I shampooing the lake out of our hair under the ice cold water pump. Though we didn't care about fishy smelling hair until our pre-teens.

Grandma cooked outside on a Coleman stove. The picnic table was her kitchen. Grandpa had made a wooden box with a raccoon-proof latch to store everything in. We ate standing up or off our laps in lawn chairs. Manners were not enforced. If you dropped it, u picked it up, rinsed it and ate it anyway.

While tent camping might sound primitive, there was electricity, flush toilets, and showers. The cabin was another story. One and a half rooms with a wood stove for heat and kerosene lamps for light. An outhouse stood just far enough away to be too scary to walk to by yourself after dark. When we were little, Grandma D kept a lidded pot by the door so we wouldn't wake everybody up trying to find someone to go outside with us.

My sister, brother, and I were the only grandchildren here. The only cousin I can remember coming here was T, though I'm sure others came from time to time.
Imagination blooms in the quiet woods with only yourselves to entertain you. We made a house where a couple of trees had fallen into natural rooms, propped across other trees. Discarded items found in the woods decorated our play house. The bedroom even had a an old rusted bed frame. Old duck decoys decorated the living room "shelves".

Evenings might be spent reading books by lantern light or playing cards. Old army cots were our beds. On nights without too many mosquitoes, the cots would be set up outside and we would sleep under the stars, the sound of crickets our lullaby. We'd leave bread under our cots to get a close up look at the baby raccoons while their mothers snuck onto the porch for the scraps from dinner.

These were the best summer vacations because they were fueled by imagination not itinerary, days and nights of freedom. The freedom to explore, discover, pretend is a freedom I have tried to give my children with our own camping trips and hope to give to my grandson.