Manly Men Doing Manly Things

As Laura stated below, I took Jackson camping a couple of weekends ago.

For some reason, in late July or early August, I got a wild hair up my rear to take Jack camping with my brother, Ryan, and his two boys, Ethan and Dylan. Up to this point, I was pretty satisfied never venturing into the wilderness for much more than a nature hike with my sons. I did a lot of camping, fishing, boating, and other outdoorsy stuff growing up; but, I'd resigned myself to being much more of the climate-controlled indoorist. I think, though, with the "being active" initiative Laura and I have tried to institute, I've re-kindled my love for activities that take place in a non-air conditioned environment.

Now, what we did would hardly be considered "roughing it" by ANY logical standard. However, we did set-up, and sleep in tents, with sleeping bags (aaaannnnd...air mattresses...), we did build a fire (in a metal, campground-supplied fire ring, with store-bought starter sticks and some charcoal lighter fluid), and we did go fishing (although the plan for that was altered a bit...more on that, below).

We'd made reservations down at the Woods-N-Waters campground in Columbus, IN; however, the week leading up to the big day, the weather forecasts were not looking favorable. In fact, on Thursday, I'd emailed Ryan with some suggestions for alternate plans in case things turned foul. Thankfully, the rains stayed away, and we were able to get down to the campground at our planned time of arrival. This place is just about 5 miles south of Columbus on I-65, and is kinda tucked in behind some semi-commercial warehouse-looking buildings. Definitely not a gutsy trek into the deep woods, here, folks.

We check in, and the first thing I notice - which, I was prepared for, as I'd read some reviews on-line from past customers that'd indicated this - is that this campground is primarily an RV site for seasonal and permanant residents. No big deal, but it definitely meant that the accommodations present in the campground were MUCH nicer than if we'd been staying at a state park or something. I go into the office to pay for the campsite, and the dude working behind the desk looks like Lawrence Tierney's older brother, Jim Bob Tierney, or something (he's on the right in the linked photo). The only thing that kept running through my mind was the scene from Resevoir Dogs where Tim Roth's character, Freddy Newandyke is describing to his undercover cop partner his first meeting with Tierney's crime-boss character, Joe Cabot. When he's describing Cabot's appearance, he asks, "Do you remember the Fantastic Four?"

To which his partner responds, "Yeah, with the invisible b**ch? 'Flame on!' and that s**t?"

And Freddy says, "The Thing: the motherf***er looks like The Thing."

The guy was as NICE as could be, though. Very polite.

The campground was extremely well-kept. Clean, very nice restrooms; a great playground that the boys played on for a bit; a basketball court; a well-stocked campstore; a laundry facility; and even a clubhouse, of sorts, in which they had a pool table, television, and some ancient arcade games (I'm talkin' OPERATION WOLF, here, man!). The campsite was freshly-mowed, because one of the employees was running the rider mower over it as we were pulling in. We get out of the cars, unload a bit of gear, let the boys start chasing each other around with sticks and waterguns, and Ryan and I proceed to set up camp. We really only had to get on the boys about wandering off too far a couple of times, but the real pain in the butt was setting up Ryan's tent. Or, perhaps, "Outdoors Estate Complex" would be a more appropriate term. No kidding, this thing could've slept a company of Army soldiers. At one point, I asked him, "Dude, when does Hef show up with some Bunnies and escort us all to the Grotto down in this thing!?!??!" Seriously was a sight to behold, let me tell you.

After camp was mostly set-up, I made a restroom trip with Jack and Dylan, and the grass-mowing guy stopped us as he was driving a golf cart, to inform us that at 7PM, there'd be free root beer floats available in the clubhouse. So, we finished camp, got the boys cleaned up a bit, and went to enjoy root beer floats - a VERY welcomed event by everyone in our party. Gave the boys free ice cream, and was a great filler for entertainment for about an hour, to alleviate the need for Ryan and I to work on occupying their attention. The best part was, the boys were climbing all around the pool table, and eventually worked their way underneath it, where they discovered that the pay-to-play rules of the table were easily circumvented by guys small enough to crawl under the table and fit up into the guts of it wherein they could reach the opening that lead to the ball-catch mechanism in the table. They started pulling balls out of there prior to Ryan and I realizing what was going on, and were trying to play games with them! We learned how to get free games of pool at our next bar outing from a 6, 4, and 3 year old!

After the floats, we enlisted the boys to gather kindling to get a fire started. Once that thing was going, it was a source of constant fascination for the boys; but not one with which they got too overwhelmed. They were certainly curious, but respectful of the dangerous nature, which I was quite happy to see. We roasted marshmallows and hot dogs (Vienna Beef hot dogs are HIGHLY recommended for your next open-flame hot dog roasting!), took a scary ghost walk out on the "nature trail" in the campground, and finally took a wind-down walk around the campground roads to just burn off some last bits of energy. Once the PJ's were on, we sat around the fire, I told a humorous ghost story (the one about the haunted hotel, and the voice in the room that says, "I got ya where I want ya, and now I'm gonna EAT YA!"), the boys tried telling their own stories, and then we finally got everyone in the tents around 9:30. Dylan fell asleep pretty quickly, Jack goofed around for about an hour before passing out, but Ethan was up well past midnight. He wouldn't even fall for the deal I tried to make with him to watch me stoke up the fire real high once, then he'd go off to bed once it'd died back down. I think Ryan told me he finally fell asleep around 1AM.

Anyway, at about 2AM, just as I'm getting into a deep sleep, I hear the text message notification alarm on my cell phone - tucked safely into my shoe, between the air mattress and the tent sidewall. I fumble about to open it up, and it's a text from Uncle Chris. He'd forgotten we were going to go up to his lake property the following day, and borrow his pontoon boat to take the boys fishing on Grandview Lake; so, he'd taken the boat keys back to Indy with him when he was last down at the lake. Ugh. I didn't EVEN want to broach that subject in the morning. But, thankfully, everyone kind of took it in stride, and we went up to the property anyway. I don't think anyone was much in the mood to get real crazy on the fishing action, so Ryan got out a pole, let the boys cast it and play around a bit, then we headed back for Indy.

All-in-all, I had SUCH a great time. The boys were outstanding with their behavior, we all enjoyed ourselves, and it wasn't too taxing an experience. No, Grizzly Adams and his Band of Rugged Frontiersmen, we were not...but, it was enough of an outdoors experience to satisfy that craving I felt, but didn't leave me feeling helpless and afraid we'd have to consider leaving a man behind to better the chances of survival for the group at large. Ryan was brave enough to bring along his camera, so maybe I'll badger him for the couple of pictures he took, and try to post them on here later.

(K)