Camping Day 1

It is easier to sail many thousand miles through cold and storm and cannibals, in a government ship, with five hundred men and boys to assist one, than it is to explore the private sea, the Atlantic and Pacific Ocean of one's being alone. . . . It is not worth the while to go round the world to count the cats in Zanzibar.
-- Henry David Thoreau

Monday, July 7, 1997

We set off this morning as a caravan of two vehicles, the rented 12-passenger van and a jeep pulling a tent-trailer. My brother-in-law wouldn't be able to stay with us, but wanted to see that we got set up correctly at the state park we were going to.

Killen's Pond State Park had a lake, a campground with water and electric at each campsite (plus real toilets and showers at the bathhouse!), and a "water park." This park was chosen by my sister B---- because it was between Wilmington and Cape Henlopen, so the plan was to set up camp and spend the day today at the water park, then go to the beach tomorrow. This breaks up the drive.

We picked a good campsite and set up the tents and the tent-trailer, then went to the water park. This is a new facility consisting of:

• A zero-depth entry main pool. This means that one end of the pool slopes gradually up until it is on-grade with the pool deck, so people can choose their own depth. This pool also has a mushroom fountain you can stand under, pipes with various fountains and sprays that you can control with wheels that turn, and a lily-pad walk where you try to step from one large flat float to another while hanging on to a rope above your head.
• A kiddie pool with two large frogs that are water slides. This pool also had small fountains that you could stand on and have the water spray you.
• A youth pool with a climbing structure in it, along with similar fountains and on-off wheels as in the main pool.
• Two very long water slides (but only one was working) that you needed to be four feet tall to use.

All this combined with nice chairs and benches, shade shelters, a snack bar and we were in heaven. Having four adults meant that we could give each child a lot of freedom. My two older nephews went down the water slide, the next youngest practiced swimming with a float on his back, and the youngest paddled around and started splashing some boys very much older than him. He is no respecter of age or size; he is never intimidated.

After we had had about four hours [!] of swimming, we went back to camp. Although the water park and campground were in the same park, to drive between the two we had to leave the park and drive on the county roads.

By request of my brother-in-law we had Hamburger Helper, Cheeseburger flavor, for dinner. Not our usual fare, but we were hungry and it tasted great! A previous camper had left firewood, so we built a fire and roasted marshmallows on long skewers that my brother-in-law bought at a tag sale. The three older boys loved developing new flavor names for the various degrees of burning they applied to the marshmallows.

We were slapping on the bug repellent and reposing ourselves in the folding chairs. (One of the nice features of Seattle is the relative lack of mosquitoes and bugs.) The campground wasn't full up, so there were empty campsites on either side of us. Good thing, since we had sort of spilled over our alloted space into the next space.

I had a private boudoir of a tent, a small one that I had to myself. It was still pretty hot, so I didn't get into my sleeping bag, just reclined on the pad and listened to my tv-sound radio. Reception wasn't great in the rural area we were in, so I drifted off to sleep.