So Your Vacation was a Nightmare

Not a horrible nightmare -- no-one was hospitalized, nothing was ripped apart. A tear your hair out, what do you have against fun kind of nightmare. I can relate. In fact, my whole family can! It's not that we didn't have lots of fun. You'd be surprised how much fun two adults, three kids, and a dog can have in a sixteen foot trailer with a Coleman lamp and a port-a-pottie. When my family talks about the camping trips we took when we kids were really still kids, we'll reminisce about seeing Old Faithful and finding cool rocks and tramping through the woods. But then the real stories come out. Like the time we got together with a bunch of my folks' friends and all their kids. Playing Uno, shouting "R R R" and Raaaaaiiiiiiinnnnnneeeeeerrrrrrr Beeeeeer" with some other campers, being told by the park ranger to settle down. That was the trip where we went canoeing. Dad and his buddy were forced to trade places and the guides vowed never to let married people in the same canoe ever again. Said guides claimed to often see wildlife on the river banks. The only wild life seen that day was us. I ended up sharing my canoe with a couple of pre-teen boys. When we got close to the dock, they both reached for it -- we were much too far away -- and in we went. "Remember when the canoe tipped over?" my mom will say. "You're face was so red! I've never seen anyone with a face that red." Then we all laugh. Like we laugh about the time a kid threw a game across the trailer. ("Everyone was ganging up on me!" my now adult brother still rightly insists. And laughs a bit.) Like we laugh about the time we were NOT lost. We could see the building we were looking for. The only thing separating us and it was a couple dozen yards of blackberry bushes. We made the crossing with grim determination. Except the dog. The dog had to be carried. No fool, that dog. At the time -- nightmatres, all of them. Now? Good times. Good times.