I grew up camping and going on hikes. Every year, my family would pack everything into the car and we would drive for hours to a different camping spot. My favorite part of these family outings was when the car would break down and we would get to stay in a hotel with a pool. The car always broke down, it was just a matter of when and where it would happen. The camping was fun, too. I was exposed to many more museums than I wanted to see at the time, but as an adult I appreciate all of those experiences.
One year, we drove to the rain forest in Washington State. We made sure to camp on the dry side of the forest, so we wouldn't get too wet while we were staying there. The forest was beautiful and to this day, it is my favorite place we visited as a family. One of the nights we were there, it started to rain. Well, it kept raining and what woke me up was that feeling of being wet. It turned out that we had pitched out canvas tent in the only low spot in the camp site. We were in quite a puddle of water. We all took our wet sleeping bags to the car and spent the rest of the night sleeping in the car.
Over that next year, our canvas tent had slowly rotted. We all went to the camping store to pick out a new tent. My dad decided it was a good idea, since we had to buy new equipment anyways, why not start backpacking as a family. We all found backpacks that fit and we bought light weight equipment to take with us. We spent weekends going on hikes with cans of food in our backpacks to get used to hiking with weight on our backs. My parents told us of their honeymoon backpacking trip and that very same trip was our first trip as a family.
After that summer, we went for a ten day backpacking trip every summer, until I graduated from high school. Those trips were the times when my family was their happiest. No one could really argue, since we only had each other for support. We all looked out for each other and we saw some fantastic sights in the mountains running north/south in California. We ended up hiking about half of the John Muir Trail in bits and pieces over the years.
This led to my leading a backpacking trip as a camp counselor at a Girl Scout summer camp. My other summer fun was to go to Girl Scout camp every summer. I never got home sick and didn't understand the ones who did get home sick. I figured this was the only time I would get to be away from my family and get to do things like canoeing and horseback riding. My last two summers in high school, I worked almost the entire summer as a counselor in training, which led to my first job as a camp counselor after I graduated from high school. I worked as a camp counselor for three summers and loved every minute of that job. To this day, it is still the best job I have ever had.
The John Muir Trail overview.
The Angeles National Forest is where my family trudged through our practice hikes.
Camp Tautona is where I worked as a camp counselor.
Camp Osito Ranch is one of the summer camps I attended as a Girl Scout in southern California.
Page last updated 02/04/07