Camping Horror Stories

[campincrew]

We all love the great outdoors and camping is our favorite way to enjoy it right? Does this sound like a great time?

Early fall, just after the kids return to school, seems like a great time to try and get in one last campout.  The air is warm in the day and cool at night, just right for a nice camp fire and teaching the kids how to make smores.

Friday after work, we start our trek to the great outdoors by loading the van with all of our gear, we are tenting  :tent: at this time, so we have to haul it all inside the car.  Tent, sleeping bags, gas stove,even a kitchen sink.  Then we add the 3 car seats, 2 boosters for our older children, 1 full sized for our 2 year old.  

Traffic heading out of Chicago is terrible today, there must have been 10 accidents on the Dan Ryan and the Calumet, but we are happy since we are going camping.  After a 4 hour drive that should have taken only 2 hours we arrive at our exit.  

It's dark now, and we are following the campground's directions to their gate, but it is very difficult to see, it has started to drizzle a little and my eyes are a bit tired.  We are going camping, but I am quickly losing my joy.  

I start getting frustrated since I can't find the campground.  The area is sort of remote, no phones and no cellular service-because cellular phones were not very common.  

I am mad as we finally find the campground, my wife and I are barely speaking.  But hey, we are going camping, everything will be alright.  

Did I mention that the kids are cranky and tired, that helps doesn't it?

11:00 PM now, and we are setting up the tent, it is very very dark, so I turn the van and face the site, using the headlights so we can see.  

Finally around midnight, we can put the kids to bed, make a fire and laugh off the traffic and the frustrations of the day over a cold beer. WRONG!  

Our toddler is very cranky and will not sleep, she dozes off and on as we try and rock her and pacify her needs, this is only temporary-it gets worse.

1:00AM and we decide to get some sleep, tomorrow is another day.  

1:30 the toddler still won't settle down, so we take turns trying to get her to sleep. This goes on for about 90 minutes, now we are really angry and tired, my wife and I are not speaking since we each blame the other for the predicament.  My wife decides to put the toddler in her car seat and drive her around the campground, the baby always sleeps when in a moving car.  I say Great, that way I can at least get a little sleep myself.  30 minutes later, my wife and child return.  The baby is sleeping and my wife decides she will sleep in the van with her, so she won't wake up again, good idea!

Maybe we can still have a nice weekend after all.

Saturday, 6:00 AM, guess who is up, yup, the toddler and now she is hungry.  I feed the child while my wife makes the coffee-strong, very strong.  We make up and plan on having a great day.

Around 7:30, our oldest child, who is in 1st grade wakes up all itchy. "mommy, I have mosquito bites" she states, She wants some cream to make the itch go away.  My wife gets out the first aid kit to find the benadryl.  She locates the small white tube and lifts my daughter's shirt to apply the cream, then says "Oh no!"  What? I ask, is the matter?  Come look, she retorts.  

Never in my life will I ever forget what I saw next.   :yikes: Bumps, hundreds of red,swollen bumps.  My daughter has the chicken pox!

As my wife continues to apply benadryl and comfort my daughter, I slowly begin to break camp-we have to return home, camping is no place for a sick child.

As we start getting things put away I think to myself, well, at least it isn't raining.  Because, you see, when you are tent camping it always seems to rain when you are breaking camp.

Have you ever said something and wished you had never said that, :banghead:  well, I did, just then.  I say, hey Honey, "at least it isn't raining".  Man am I stupid!

Not more than 2 minutes later, the sky opens up as if I were standing under Niagra Falls.  Man am I stupid.  Oh, did I mention that it got considerably colder as well?

Thirty minutes later we are on the road, rain soaked and cold, headed home.  Wow! what a great weekend.

[ForestCreature]

So...do ya miss the tent?   Somehow it always seem a kid will come down with a disease while camping.
 
 Our sick kid horror wasn't quite as bad. We were to meet up with several family members for a camping (holiday) weekend. The drive up I 75 in MI is never fun on a holiday so we leave home at night around 10 PM  to miss the rush, which we did. About 4.5 hrs later we arrive to the area, by now it's almost 3 AM so we decide to get a room at a nearby hotel (the hotel keeper wasn't pleased to have to work at that hour). Got our room all was good. Head to the CG early in the morning headed out and got the tent set up.
 
 We had sent our son up earlier in the week with my brother. Others were there early as well. We get there my SIL says something to me about my son having red spots, being the mosquito magnet he is I wasn't concerned. The skeeters were bad afterall. Another SIL comments he looks like he has chicken pox. OH NO, the skeeters love him he's been bitten up this bad before. Besides he wasn't acting ill in the least.
 
 We take him & some of the other kids to the lodge (we were camping in a nice UAW facility) to take a swin in the nice indoor pool. The chlorine must have started to work on those spots, they started to itch and swell. Benedryl to the rescue. Then we decide to go down the road to deer watch in the evening, other than the itching all is well.
 
 The next day we daytrip over to Mackinaw City to play tourist & do  the strip of gift shops. About an hr or so into giftshopping my son says he dosent feel well, and now all those spots are breaking open.  Now I am convinced he has Chicken pox! We headed back to camp. Confered with the rest of the gang that was there and had decided all the kids with the group were already exposed so leaving is a little late to save the others. We stayed the rest of the weekend, keeping my son comfortable (luckily he diddn't have a severe case).  By the next day the fever subsided and he was off riding his bike with the others.
 
 To this day I wonder how many people came down with the Chicken Pox that visited Mackinaw  that weekend!