Crazy Camping: The Pouring Rain Makes It Crazy!

Each August, a whole bunch of families from the elementary school converge on a state park campground to enjoy campfires, smores, the beach, games of horse shoes and euchre, endless loops on scooters and, inevitably, torrential rain.

I am as surprised as anyone to say this. But I love camping. I love how inexpensive it is and how it gets you out of your normal routine and how free it makes the kids to do and explore.

If you go with friends, it's just like living in a commune.
Except everybody still shaves their legs.

(One of my Sister Wives.)

Granted we still have electricity and bathrooms and showers (though what I saw in a shower on my first day up there has scarred me for life....I would tell you but then you'd be scarred too.) (Okay fine, someone thought it wasn't a public shower. They dropped the L.) (Oh my God I just gagged again.)

(Let's burn that from our collective brains.)

Most families come up on Friday after work and stay until Sunday. According to my friend's 5-year-old daughter Sarah though, "The Moms come up on Thursday and do all the work and then on Friday the Dads come up and drink all the beer." Which is remarkably accurate.

(Would like you to know he set up the campground before he drank beer.)

This year we drove up Thursday evening as a family because Logan had Friday off (Hooray for Unpaid Days Off!) and had a great time Thursday evening, all day Friday and Friday night.

Friday was a great day, except exhausting.

On Friday all the talk was weather, "Big storms coming through!" "Wide radar stretch of heavy rainfall."

But my phone said, "60% chance of rain." So I opened my big fat trap and said, "Well that means there's a 40% chance it won't rain!"

(Plus it was so beautiful, it couldn't possibly rain!)

When I woke up Saturday morning my phone said, "100% chance of rain." So much for optimism.

(At least there was bacon.)

We rigged up a rain fly for our rainfly-less tent and it was pretty....janky looking. It rained and rained and rained some more. Our little campground started to look like the saddest shanty village.

I started out the morning saying, 'I can handle the rain! I'm not a baby!'

After the first 4 hours of rain, my resolve began to leave. In the 5th hour, with my daughter standing next to me asking every 2.3 seconds if we could go home now, I tried to have a drink to see if that would numb me to the ridiculous rain pounding our communal canopy.

(I may have gotten a little angry about the weather, but I swear I didn't do this.)

That didn't help so I flipped off the sky, got in the car and waited for Logan to drive us home, leaving all our camp stuff up there until the following morning.

This was the third annual Crazy Campers trip and it's rained every Saturday since this event had a name. Every year we think, "There is NO WAY it can rain again next year."

Then it does.

That's what makes it crazy.

(Doesn't this look crazy?)

Comments

[Ken]

Sounds like great fun, despite the rain.

Am I the only one who doesn't know what "dropped the L" means? (Sorry to bring that up again.)

[Ken]

Oh, nvm. I just got it.

[Mom24]

I don't have a clue what it means either.

We got rained out the only weekend this summer we could swing a trip. Friday was great, but Saturday we got out of there once we knew it was going to rain like hell. We went once and it rained for 28 hours straight. Not good. There isn't a rainfly in the world that can stand up to that--at least not that we could put up.

[Krysta]

ok, this makes me homesick. Even with the rain.

[brie]

Some of my favourite childhood (and adult) memories are camping with my family---all of them: Mom & Dad, sister, aunts, uncles, cousins, grandparents and various pets. I think it's great that you do this every year! I'm from the West Coast of Canada (aka the "Wet Coast" *groan) and, to me, it just isn't camping unless it rains!

[MelissaS]

Okay you asked for it.

Public Shower

take away the l

Pubic Shower

I saw something horrifying in that shower.

[Procrastamom]

Yes, that one took me a minute to get too. Ewwww!

And remember, if it doesn't rain while you're camping then how are you supposed to remember the experience? I don't remember one single camping trip where it DIDN'T rain, but I know there have been a few. The ones where it did rain are etched in my brain forever.

[Meredith]

I've never even wanted to go camping but this actually made me consider it! Especially when you commented on how free it makes the kids to explore. I don't mind rain though.

[Tricia]

Gah, I'm really, really dense today (everyday). You saw someone pubes in the shower? You stepped on pubes? Something about pubes?

[Erin@TheLocalsLoveIt]

It sounds like so much fun. I think I could put up with the rain. Even if it happened EVERY year. Makes for a great memory for the kids.

[kate]

Is that a lake in the background? It's so..so..BLUE that it looks like the ocean. (don't laugh. I've never been to Michigan).

The only good thing about the rain is that the kids hopefully didn't mind playing in it, which meant you got some time alone in the tent to read? Maybe? Once you duct-taped Maddie to a tree far, far away?

[ella]

I love camping. We go every June. Aunts, uncles, cousins. It's a blast.
June 2007 it rained. A LOT! It flooded.

We would sure love to have some of that rain right now. I'm in Austin.

[Kelly H]

How about next year you buy a canopy of some kind. Maybe a few to string together. Then you would have a place to hang out that will keep you dry during the downpours. They're not cheap but it seems like you'll need to use them year after year! LOL! Great pictures. I love camping too. Here on the northern California coast our curse is fog. Mommy stays in the tent in her down sleeping bag with fluffy socks on when it gets below 55 degrees. Kids don't really get that IT'S FRICKEN FREEZING!!

[Tracy]

Actually, I don't think it rained the 1st year...that's the last time we went. It was the year of "big daddy" and the ultimate horseshoe tourney that the crazy campers crashed. We also got busted by the ranger for being too loud after hours. Years 2 and 3...definte rain...we stayed home.

[Meri]

My family has a big reunion at a state park every year in August and it ALWAYS rains. My aunt finally gave in a few years back and bought a portable carport tent/canopy that gets set up over a bunch of picnic tables. It's so much better than anything else we've ever tried.

[Lynne]

I needed "dropped the L" explained too. Ewwww!

It sounds like everyone had a blast despite the rain. Lovely pictures too! Nothing brings people together like being soaked and not being able to do anything about it.

However I am glad my neighbors have just invited us to a backyard campout so I don't have to feel guilty about not going anywhere to camp this year...a dry home is just a few steps away! Clearly you are a stronger woman than me!

[northerngurl]

There's something very relaxing about camping, even in the rain. And the food always tastes great.

[Tarin]

Even WITH the "drop the L" explanation I don't get it. What was there? Pee?

[Katrina]

We have a field day near us that is either pouring with rain for the 2 days and you need to be wearing boots to slosh around the site or it has slowly built up all week and by the time it starts we have 38 degrees (C or that is 100.4 F)Every year I say we will not go, we don't need anything else for the farm and then at the last minute we decide to go because there might be something new and innovative to see. Why do we put ourselves through it???? Though reading it still makes me want to go camping though, maybe we could start off with the girls and I in the back yard??

[bonzai]

I'm going to have to join the "L" less crowd. I still don't get it either. Even with more info. Then again, my husband is still laughing about the fact that I had to have the 'taint' line explained to me in "Baby Mama". Not a word I learned here in IL or my four years in MI...

Maybe it's because I don't camp? I'll gut a fish and bait a hook, but I only sleep with a solid roof over my head and real bed under my butt. It's my tiny bit of high maintenance.

[kris]

i understand the dropped L means that pubic hair was involved, i just don't understand HOW they were involved. in a public shower there will be nude people you don't know and adult people have pubes... pubes end up on the floor/etc.. that is life so were they shaving them or what!? maybe i am less easily scarred by these things..

[MelissaS]

I just don't think taking all your pubes off in a public shower is cool.

But then...I don't know maybe people do this all the time and I'm the crazy one.

[amy]

I love camping with the family. Problem is every time we do it rains which has apparently scarred family greatly. Wimps!! Bring on the camping. Too wonderful you camp with a regular bunch.

[Bill]

Nice pictures. What park were you at?

[joaaanna]

All this pube talk is cracking me up... Gross - but hilarious!

[Kate]

Ohhhhhhh, Eeeek!

[Tricia]

OH! So THAT'S what was going on with the pubes. I thought you just caught a glimpse of someone else's pubes and got the vapors or something, which made me think "eh, yeah, it's a public shower and you might see someone else's pubes there, whatev."

Granted, I'm a little sasquatchian when it comes to that area so I find I don't point fingers at other people's pubes.

Now there's an image if you took that last sentence literally! A woman with a sasquatchian crotch standing in a public shower in a campground pointing at another woman with a bald crotch!

That would've made you decide to get really rough it and not take a shower at all.

[MelissaS]

Im thinking it must be some kind of fetish. Like some person grows their pubic hair for the entire year and then considers the public shower at the state park the perfect place to molt.

They probably stand around the shower area watching as people run from that shower trying not to vomit.

I'm still, seriously horrified by that pile of hair. Which is probably why that person does it and he/she is getting off reading all about how their little stunt made me gag and wretch and run from the shower stall.

[Nicole]

I'm sorry it rained on you. That sucks. But it looks like there was a lot of fun to be had before the rain came. I miss camping, its too damn hot here in Memphis.

[alexis]

so, you drove home and left all your camping stuff up there until the next morning? and then drove back to pack it up?

[Jodi]

It did rain year 1 - Sunday. I made Blaine take the tent down in it while I sat in the car! I love the idea of a backyard campout.... I've got the backyard to do it. Maybe next year and then if it rains, we're all less than a mile from home. And of course we can go inside and drink in my living room. By the way, thanks for taking the picture of our sister wife. It has Blaine on the phone in the background... working while camping, of course.

[Kathleen]

It looks exactly like the camp trip we came back from last weekend....it's rained for 5 of the last 6 years...I don't know how many more times I can take that. If the kids didn't love it so much...so much work for the mom, so much fun for the kids...hmmm.

[marcy]

is that ludington state park? looks a bit like it to me-- its my favorite one!

kate: if you ever find yourself in michigan hit up the west coast-- its basically a huge, aqua blue freshwater ocean lined with sandy beaches and dunes.

[marcy]

is that ludington state park? looks a bit like it to me-- its my favorite one!

kate: if you ever find yourself in michigan hit up the west coast-- its basically a huge, aqua blue freshwater ocean lined with sandy beaches and dunes.

[Corey]

It's been so long since I read your blog, but you had me cracking up with the pube talk!

At first, I was thinking L stood for log and I'll leave it at that.

How gross. I have a huge aversion to hairs as it is, but a big pile of pubes would have killed me.

[Jessica]

I have to know what park you were at . . . we're campers and I seriously don't know of a State Park beach that looks that beautiful, unless its your great photography skills deceiving me ; )

[jane]

Would it be weird if I said I love your husbands hair? I love the color.

[Nancy]

A few weeks ago, my family of 4 camped with 27 of our best friends at a provincial park near Ottawa, Ontario. We had a great - sometimes glorious - time. But my pictures aren't nearly as good as yours!