Fall break was looming ever closer on the calendar and soon we would have five days with the emptiest of nests.
So, Kindra and I decided to take a quick camping trip. I’d cover football Thursday night, and then we’d head out for a camping location that we hadn’t yet selected.
The background to the story is this:
a. Camping is one of my favorite things, and has been since I was a kid.
In a tent, or a pickup with a shell on the back, or in a popup camper. Or a bedroll on the ground under the stars. All are fun. Campfire coffee in the mornings, bacon hissing in a skillet, coyotes howling in the moonlit distance.
My favorite has always been tent camping because you can stay more or less dry in case of rain and you can get some relief from mosquitoes.
And a tent is about as easy as it gets. Throw it in the car trunk or the bed of a pickup, put it up in 10 minutes and you are good. And it stays on a shelf in the garage when you’re not using it. No maintenance required.
b. Kindra had never been camping.
These days, my lower back isn’t nearly as excited about an air mattress on the ground like it used to be, so I thought: maybe an alternative to a tent would be in order.
It was then that a small yellow light bulb clicked on over my head: we could take the minivan.
The minivan in question is a 20-year-old Dodge Caravan. We bought it new in 2001 and have rolled up 160,000 miles.
Its clear coat is long gone in spots and it has a couple of dings, but it still starts easily and runs like a train conductor’s watch.
Through its life, I have scrupulously stuck to the schedule for oil changes, and used to do them myself. Every time the odometer rolled past a multiple of 3,000 miles, the next Saturday I would pull the minivan onto the ramps in the driveway and change the oil.
The ol’ Dodge has long been paid-for, and the tag and insurance cost less than $100 a year, so I plan to keep it for as long as the wheels will roll and it doesn’t cost much for repairs.
Years ago, I took out the two back seats and started using the minivan for hauling because some things are better hauled in there than in the pickup. Yonder doghouse bass, for example.
The bass is a perfect fit and, if we have a music gig on a day that’s wet or cold, the bass will stay snug and dry all the way there and back.
I’ve hauled plywood, sacks of cement, turkeys and chickens in crates, groceries, dogs, furniture, feed, bicycles and fence posts.
My idea was to make a platform for a bed and turn the minivan into a mobile campsite.
It was easy. We lopped a foot and a half off the end of a 4-by-8 sheet of plywood and made a platform 14 inches off the floor, which gave us plenty of sleeping room and storage underneath.
We used a four-inch foam mattress and Kindra fashioned some window coverings for sleeping privacy.
It worked out well. We gave it a test run during a thunderstorm one night last week. Other than being parked on a bit of a slope, it was a comfortable night.
For the camping trip, we went to Arrowhead State Park on Lake Eufaula. Temperatures got down to the 40s, but we stayed warm and dry and slept well.
Everything we needed and more slid under the bed and the window coverings were a success.
They blacked it out like London in the blitz and we had a comfortable night’s sleep.
It was so much fun, we’re already talking about Trip No. 2.