Growing up, my family had a long-standing tradition of camping every summer. We’d go on several trips a year, at least one to our regular spot and another one anywhere else in the summer. Then there were the oddball trips at other times of the year, like the year we went to the coast on Thanksgiving to have soup on the beach instead of a big turkey dinner.

I think there were two car trips throughout the southwest; I remember our dog standing in four states at Four Corners, and I took my very first photos at Mesa Verde. I remember riding in the big Pontiac through the Rocky Mountains, and I think that car was sold when I was about six.

The main trip was always to the same lake in the north state. We’d always go with another family, and there were regulars that would come some years too. My grandparents flew in to the local airport a few times. Sometimes we’d have a ski boat and sometimes only the other family would, but we’d always do a lot of water skiing and trips to the marina for ice cream. Besides that, it was a lot of playing on the rocky red beach, picking cicada shells off of trees, and general unstructured kid stuff. It was really good for us kids, and I’d hoped to continue the tradition with my own, although it seems that I’ve fallen down on the ball with that.

My feeble attempt doesn’t even get pulled off every year. M’s family and mine try to get out to camp yearly, but it’s hard to get schedules to line up. One year I took the boys by myself, and that was a whinefest. We always have plans to include as many families with kids as we can, but those almost always fall through.

This year, things got rearranged a lot. My usual camp site was out, since Junior’s trailer can’t get down that road without scraping things off the top. M suggested a spot down near her house, by the river, and we thought that would at least save fuel. So we loaded up both trailers, one for us and one for them, and headed out. No sooner had we hit the edge of town though, than they called, saying that the campground wasn’t set up for trailers after all. We didn’t much feel like setting up in a parking lot and getting a ticket, so we changed plans on the fly.

This time, we headed for a local lake where Junior knew the trailers would fit and reservations weren’t required. But when we got there, there was a sign saying, “No Dogs.” Since M hadn’t had time to arrange for care for hers, she was now stuck. We were already in and both trailers paid for by the time we realized this trip just wasn’t going to make it, which kind of sucked. But still, we were there with three kids (John’s working at camp for the summer) and it was hot, so we might as well stay.

We set up by the lake and turned the kids loose to play in the water. Since we hadn’t planned on being at a lake, we hadn’t brought appropriate lake shoes for them. We made the girls wear their tennis shoes, but Seamus got away with nothing, since his flip-flops kept flopping off. Junior’s folks came up in time for dinner and threw a few poles in the water, and once the temperature dropped to slightly below the surface of the sun, we had a nice time hanging out.

Until the corollary of our family tradition kicked in, that is.

See, not only do we camp, but we have a history of visiting emergency rooms all over the West while camping. I remember a trip in Colorado, I think for strep throat. And there was the infamous eye-sticking incident, in which my mom still has a speck of marshmallow stick in her iris (sorry Mom.) It seemed like every summer, someone was trucked in to a hospital for something or other, and I’m dubiously proud to report that my younger son has carried on that tradition.

The kids were out playing on a shallow island, and suddenly, the girls towed Seamus back in, hollering that he was bleeding. He sure as hell was; we could see it from up at the trailer. I piggy-backed him up to the truck, leaving a blood trail you could track a wounded bear by. He’d neatly sliced open the ball of his foot on something sharp. We cleaned him up and wrapped him temporarily, but I wasn’t happy about dirty lake mud and water. The folks took the girls and we took Seamus down to the ER.

After a shockingly fast ER trip of only about three hours, Seamus didn’t come out with stitches. In another spot, he would have, but that’s a really awkward place to sew up. He got a lot of tape instead, and instructions to treat it like stitches, and a flat shoe to keep him from bending it, and crutches to keep his weight off it for ten days. He was an amazingly good sport about it all, rolling his eyes at us when we joked at him and getting very interested in the medical mechanics of the place.

So the next morning, we all went back up to retrieve our camping gear and went home for the weekend. We got some bonus time to work on the jeep and the girls got to swim a little in the pool, and poor Seamus got waited on hand and foot, which he kind of ate up. But I think the camping trip can be counted as a big flop this year.

Next year: more planning.