Growing up, all of our family vacations revolved around
camping; most likely due to campsites being cheaper than hotel rooms. The first camper I remember was a small
box camper where I slept in a bunk at one end but most of our camping was done
in a pop-up trailer which is sort of a half trailer, half tent
contraption. My parents now do
their camping in a camper with a bathroom, small kitchen, air conditioning and
TV (cable hook up optional in many campgrounds). It is basically a hotel room on wheels.
Sometimes the camping was about a means to travel and
sometimes it was just about the camping.
We went to places like Myrtle Beach and camped close to the ocean but we
also went to a place only fifteen minutes from home. It had its plusses and minuses. For one thing, being trapped in a small space with someone
who snores like my father is never much fun. But usually camping also meant access to a swimming pool,
playground facilities, a recreation room, the camp store and some yummy camp
food.
Our favorite local campground had a store that sold a wide
selection of merchandise, including penny candy at a time when it was still a
penny or at most a nickel. My
cousin and I always looked forward to coming out with out little paper bags
filled with a variety of treats.
They also stocked ice cream bars and novelties for those hot summer days
and marshmallows, graham crackers and chocolate bars for s’mores around the
evening campfire. We always
planned ahead for the s’mores and brought our own supplies but it was good to
know there was backup.
In addition to these treats, there is also something special
about ordinary foods when they are cooked over an open fire. My father would get up before the
family and start a campfire. First
he would cook the bacon, popping and sizzling until it was pulled from the fire
and set aside. The extra bacon fat
was then emptied out of the cast iron skillet, leaving just enough behind to
fry the eggs. A couple of eggs for
each person were added to the pan and little bits of bacon would cling to the
eggs. The eggs always stuck and
more often than not the yolks would get broken in the process of turning but at
that age I didn’t really like a runny yolk anyway. We had a regular toaster and I was usually in charge of
trying to get the time down so the toast was ready when the eggs were
done. We would all sit down to
breakfast at the picnic table just after water was put on the fire in order to
do the dishes when we were done.
The only item we had when we went camping that could top
that was our whirligigs. Sounds
like a thing you put out on the lawn or hang from the awning to watch it spin I
suppose but in this cake the whirligig was a cookie. Whirligigs are a crisp peanut butter cookie with a swirl of
chocolate baked in and we seldom had them at home but mom always baked them for
camping. One reason we had them on
camping trips was that they kept well stored in a tin. They never really lasted long enough to
test the staling rate anyway. We
always took our trips with my cousin’s family and I think my uncle looked
forward to those cookies as much as us kids.
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