So I told you that I bought a tent with the idea of taking Ryan camping. This was deep into my COVID furlough recreational spending spree, and camping seemed like the perfect combination of social distance and something—anything!—to do this summer.
You may not think I'd be the camping type, but the truth is that despite looking like an indoorsy gal, I actually love to camp. I love the sheer nothingness of it—staring at a body of water or staring into a fire. I don’t camp much, however, because neither Scott nor Kai are particularly into it. I, unlike Scott, have a very high tolerance for being dirty and sweaty, and unlike Kai I have a data plan so I don't require wifi. Ryan also has a high tolerance for being dirty. Probably too much so, to be honest, but she’s still very much a child so she gets a pass.
I made reservations at Lakeshore Camp Resort in Portage Indiana. It was 45 minutes away, for one, it had a pool, for another. We would do one night and test it out. We’d see how we did, see what we needed to refine and, if all went well, we would do it again, maybe with friends.
Looks nice, right?
:::
I know that there are nice parts in Indiana because I’ve been to a couple of them dropping Ryan off at summer camp. For what it's worth I also know that it’s possible to land at Midway Airport here in Chicago and decide on your cab ride to the Loop that Chicago is a shitty wasteland of 1-hour motels and 1-story windowless “doctor’s” offices. So I don’t want to judge a state too harshly based on one strip of highway. But man, I always forget how gross it feels to drive east along the lake. On one side you have huge gray factories, or whatever sort of enterprise has a tower with a flame burning perpetually at the top of it. On the other side you have endless power lines and billboards for sketchy accident lawyers. It always feels gray and harsh and dystopian, as though by just driving through you’re risking cancer. Or sterility. Or both. I assumed that we would leave that grimy industrial feel behind once we turned off the highway, but sadly, we did not.
Turning down the road to the camp from the highway, I passed trailer parks on both sides, a police impound yard, several business full of random machine parts and industrial bric a brac. Ryan expressed skepticism, but I told her to hold off judging until we got there.
I’d chosen the camp site because of its proximity to Chicago, which was probably my first mistake. But in addition to the advertised pool, the pictures on the Web site showed inflatable slides in the lake, which seemed to me enough to recommend it. I mean, it’s camping. I did not expect anything more than a plot of dirt and a fire pit. This, of course, is exactly what I got, but the setting was far from bucolic. This was a trailer park. An actual trailer park with trailers, not campers.
“I’m judging this place,” Ryan said.
“You haven’t even seen it yet,” I replied. Besides, I had a few tricks up my sleeve—fairy lights, a packet of magical chemicals that would make our campfire turn fun colors. A bag of Ruffles potato chips. We didn’t have to be the trailer park. We could just camp there for one night.
:::
The staff were very friendly. They sold me a cord of firewood that had apparently been inspected by the State of Indiana and a fire starter kit. They told me we would be at site 92. On the map it looked very near a railroad track:
We drove the posted 5 1/2 mph speed limit through the park to our site, a corner lot nestled between several permanent-looking camps. We set up our tent, blew up our pool-raft air mattresses, unrolled our sleeping bags, set up our picnic table and chairs in time for the sky to rumble, then open up and pour all over everything.
I will tell you that at that moment, I considered putting it all back in the car and going home, but since everything was wet and would need to dry anyway, and since Ryan still had hopes of going to the pool, I did what my dad would have done in that situation and cracked open a beer and sat in the car to wait out the storm.
When it stopped raining, Ryan and I walked over to the pool. There was also an arcade, which was in the process of closing but to which I promised Ryan we could return the next day. The lifeguards said they would open the pool back up at 6 pm if there was no further lightning, so we went back to the campsite to wait.
Our little corner lot was a hive of activity. Teens in golf carts blasting music came and went down the gravel road, kicking up plumes of dust despite the rain. Deep bass tracks, traditional Mexican trumpets, and, memorably, a radio commercial blasted at volume 11, all provided the soundtrack to the afternoon. And also:
:::
The pool was empty of guests when we got there. The lifeguard and Ryan chatted about their favorite swimming strokes, and Ryan got in the water to stretch her limbs for the first time since early March.
“Look at her go,” the lifeguard said, herself a competitive swimmer at the University of Indiana.
Ryan did canon balls and pencil dives, but as the pool began to fill up, she said she felt a little nervous.
“Honey,” I said, “chlorine kills viruses and bacteria. Plus there’s not that many people here.”
Still, she said she wanted to go back to the camp site. She’d been swimming for about 25 minutes.
I ruminated on that during our walk back, past the kids in their golf carts, past the cordoned off playground. About how all our our children will be agoraphobic for a long time, after having been told for all these long months that they can’t be out because people are not safe to be around.
We stopped at the lodge to get some water, and I looked out at the lake, thinking we might hit that up in the morning. There was no inflatable slide. Highway 94 was visible through the trees on the other side of the water, semi trucks whizzing by so close you could hear them.
We walked back to our campsite. The residents had all manor of set-ups: Tiny homes, campers on blocks, traditional trailers. Some of the little yards were full of decorations or flowers. Some looked like no one had been there in years. It was Sunday night, so presumably many of the owners had gone home after a weekend at the camp ground.
Back at our camp site, Ryan suggested we turn on the car and watch a movie, which we did until it was time to cook dinner. For this purpose, I had purchased a camp stove and some propane, which I successfully hooked up and used without a giant explosion:
I couldn't decide whether to boil them or saute them,
so I did a little of both.
After dinner, we set about making a fire.
I had purchased a packet of fire-starting sticks for this purpose, and placed two of our three logs into the fire pit. The fire sticks burned merrily, but the logs stubbornly refused to do anything. I found a few sticks and tossed those into the pit. These also burned quickly, but then burned out.
“I think the fire needs more oxygen, not more fuel,” Ryan said.
Part of me was all, what do YOU know about it but Ryan is a Girl Scout and goes to Girl Scout overnight camp and had helped me set up the tent, so I decided she may have a point.
“What should I do?” I asked.
She shrugged. “The counselors at camp wave their clipboards at the fire,” she offered. “Do you have a clipboard?”
Obviously I did not. But I handed her a paper plate.
“Will this work?” I asked.
She waved the paper plate at the fire, causing a plume of smoke and not much else. Eventually we burned the plates. I snuck into a neighboring campsite that looked like no one had been there since 1986 and found some more dry twigs. For a few moments, we had what looked like a merry fire. Ryan successfully roasted several marshmallows and made a s’more. I stole more kindling from the place next door, but though the logs smoldered, they never caught fire. The State of Indiana’s firewood inspector will get a strongly worded letter of complaint.
:::
Giving up on the fire, we watched movies in the car. To get my buy-in, I made Ryan watch an episode of Scooby Doo, a show I’d been trying to get her to watch for years. (Mini review: “I mean, it’s fine.) Then we switched to Jurassic Park 2.
Around 10:30, We took flashlights and went to find the bathroom. Our feet crunched gravel as we walked through the quiet camp, flashlights playing on the rocks. I was telling her about the magical flashlights in the X-Files when we got to the bathroom. I reached for the handle and it was…locked.
Confused, I walked around to the back, where it said “Laundry” above the door. This was locked, as well. I knew there was another bathroom up the gravel road, so we trudged back up the gravel path. This one was locked, as well.
Ryan was glad, as she was concerned that there would be spiders in the bathrooms. And while I also don’t love a spidery campground bathroom, I also had to go to the bathroom. I dropped Ryan back at the car and locked her inside, then trudged back down the path to the ranger station. A few golf carts loaded with people swerved drunkenly around me and off into the night. The ranger station was closed.
I pulled out my phone to check the Web site to see if I’d missed something about the bathrooms being closed due to COVID, and indeed I saw a line that the campground would be open to “self-contained” units beginning in May. But certainly they would have told me if there would not be bathrooms available when I made a TENT camping reservation.
Right?
Ryan was watching for me to come back.
“I was getting a little worried,” she said.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “There are no bathrooms. Do you need to go?”
She said she didn’t. But I did, so I squatted behind the tent.
By this time it was 11:00 pm, quiet time, so we shut off the car and went to bed.
Ryan turned off the fairy lights and tried to go to sleep, while I read for a while on my iPhone.
“What are you reading?” She asked.
But I was reading a book about paranormal romance and didn’t want to get into it with her, so I turned my phone off and went to bed.
And that’s when a train came barreling past the camp ground, a loud, grinding, clanking mechanical whooshing sound that seemed to fill our tent, leaving little room for any other sensation.
Ryan and I both reached out in the darkness to link our hands together, and we stayed that way until long after the train passed.
I would like to say that it was the only train, but you know it wasn’t. They woke me up all night long, and in my twilight haze I began to name them old-timey names.
Ah, it’s 3:02 am. That’s the Screeching Hellcat out of New Haven right on time.
What’s that? Why it’s 4:44! Must be the Screaming Devil bound for Kansas City.
At some point, I woke to drops of water against the tent.
Once, I woke up sure something had rubbed against my toe through the tent canvas.
I also woke up every time I touched my face.
:::
The Shrieking Diablo between Columbus and Fairbanks woke us both around 7 am. I needed coffee. I needed to pee.
Ryan went back to watching movies in the car, and I tried to start some water boiling, but my lighter had died, probably as a result of being left out in the rain. I trudged to the ranger station, which wouldn't open until 9 am.
Stumbling back into the car, I slid against the cool leather seat. We would watch Jurassic Park for two hours until the ranger station opened, then we would eat breakfast. The little arcade near the pool would open at 11, the pool itself would open at 12. We could do this.
I tried to watch Jeff Goldblum and Julianne Moore catch a T-rex for a little while. Then I put the car in gear and did the only thing that made any sense:
Ryan wanted McDonald’s, and despite having big plans to make her pancakes, I caved without too much work on her part. I stopped at a gas station try to buy a lighter, and while I was there I used the bathroom.
Then we drove back to camp.
I asked the lady at the gate if there were any bathrooms open. She said that there were, just not the ones by my camp site. I have no idea why the woman who checked us in hadn’t mentioned that tiny little fact. I drove Ryan to one of the bathrooms, and scouted for spiders for her.
Really?
Then we went back to the camp site. I made myself breakfast out of sheer principle before I started breaking down our gear: Rolling sleeping bags, folding chairs, packing cooking equipment.
I took all of our trash to the ranger station, passing a family sitting outside of their trailer on the way. The mother and father were probably my age. A girl who looked to be about 13 sat with them. They all waved, the picture of a lovely family. They had this sticker on the back of their station wagon:
On the one hand, yet on the other...
At this point I really wanted to get out of here, but the WHOLE POINT was to fix summer for Ryan, so I made myself busy, taking all the poles out of the tent and laying it over the picnic table, planning to hang out and allow the tent to dry before folding it up and putting it into its stuff sack. But the clouds grew menacing and a few drops of water began to fall, so I opened the back of the minivan and just shoved the whole tent in, and abandoned the camp site.
It is impossible to drive 5 1/2 miles per hour, and also that’s a super annoying speed limit, so I drove at between 8 and 10 miles per hour back to the pool house. The arcade had garage doors that opened to the outside, so I didn’t feel that horrible letting her play, plus we had to wait for the pool to open at noon anyway.
At 11, there was no sign of movement inside, the doors were still firmly shut.
“Should we knock on the door?” Ryan asked.
“I don’t think there’s anyone in there,” I replied.
“But it’s 11:10,” she argued, as though that made any difference.
When at last the doors opened, Ryan rushed in. There were maybe 7 or 8 games inside, including a couple of crane games, a skee-ball and the like.
“We should play this,” she said excitedly, pointing to one of those water pistol race games.
I pointed to the sign: “Out of order.”
“We’ll do something else,” I said, looking around. Most of the games had out of order signs.
“We’re out of quarters,” the woman behind the counter informed me. “We should have more in about an hour.”
Ryan came up beside me.
“I’m so sorry,” I said.
“Can we just go home?” She asked.
:::
We walked back to the car.
“Are you sure you don’t want to stick around and swim?” I asked her.
“I just want to go home.”
I put my arm around her.
“I feel like crying,” I said, and squeezed her against me. And I really did. She’d been so excited for this whole trip and none of it went well. “I’ll find us a better place to camp next time.”
Before getting on the highway, I drove back through Starbucks for me, and through McDonald’s to get Ryan some ice cream.
“You know that these trips are supposed to be disasters, right?” I asked her.
“Ew, why?” She asked in return.
“Because that’s what makes them memorable. I remember a camping trip when I was like 14 or so that was SO miserable. We got to the campsite after dark and it was raining, and we had our giant Golden Retriever with us and everyone was wet and miserable.”
“The only thing I’ll remember is being disappointed,” Ryan said. But she didn’t say it like a sullen teen. She said it like every other kid this summer, where nothing is how you wish it would be.
No amount of bargaining with tents and promises and campfires with fancy colorful flames will make any of this okay or bring back forth grade or the summer when she was 10.
But I swear to you that I’m still going to try.
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