Camping memories

Last weekend I went camping and it brought back some fond memories.

I shared one memory on Facebook last Thursday, what would have been my parents’ 54th anniversary. We often were camping as a family on their anniversary. The middle of July or August seemed to be the timeframe we always headed for cooler grounds.

Ironically, it wasn’t until moving to Lovell that my family camped in the Big Horn Mountains for the first time. Usually it was the Wind River or Beartooth Mountains. I loved going up the switchback road to the Beartooths. My mother didn’t enjoy it so much.

But on their anniversary, if we happened to be camping, my sister and I would venture out and pick my mother a bouquet of wild flowers. The flowers this year along the Red Gulch Road are extremely colorful, with purple, white, yellow and red dotting the landscape. One year, unbeknownst to us youngsters we picked, well — the state flower. My mother was shocked and nervous, although I think secretly happy at her beautiful bouquet. We didn’t know it was the state flower, it was just a pretty red flower.

I remember one trip we were going into some dispersed campsite on a nice rough road and the road wound its way between two trees that my mother insisted was too narrow for the camper to fit. She was wrong, and she was right. Most of the camper fit just fine. We got stuck until Dad gave our old International a bit more gas and we were loose, with a loud “clunk” sounding behind us.

He had ripped the bumper off, it was lying on the other side of the two trees from where we were.

I also remember one August, happened to be around the 16th, my sister and I were playing outside the camper, the guys were off fishing and my mother was listening to the radio. We heard let her out a short cry and she came to the camper door to announce that Elvis had died. We made some sort of sympathetic remark and then looked at each other and said … “Who’s Elvis?”

After us kids were grown we stopped going camping and then when I moved to Lovell my parents and I decided to resume the tradition, this time in the Big Horns. We explored Tie Flume and Dead Swede camprounds and Sibley Lake. We’d go fishing at Twin Lakes and it was there my father taught me how to play poker.

The weather was windy and the fishing not so great so we cast out with our worms and bobbers and proceeded to play cards. After some time, the wind picked up and we began to reel in. Lo and behold I had a fish. Who knows how long he had been on the hook as we both had forgotten to watch our bobbers.

Camping provided, and still is providing, many special memories for me. If you haven’t ventured out with a camper or tent, you should “rough it” at least once in a lifetime.