Tenting Memories

I was thinking about recent adventures with our church teens and thought of a camping trip out West. One of our camp sites was Kings Creek Campground in Utah, located was near the town of Tropic. As a dry camp, it meant the campsite had no water for showers. The site did have potable water, water for hand washing, and for flushing of the toilets. Our assigned campsite was unusual because it was large and had an amphitheater with bleachers that stepped up from a concrete surrounded fire pit.

By now we were old pros at setting up camp. We had set up our tents and cooked our meals in the dark of night before. This one was easy, because it was still daylight. The girls set up their tent, the guys set up theirs and set up tents for the women chaperones while the women cooked the meal and the men built the campfire.

It was Saturday night, but we had our church service that evening after the meal. There would be no time for it in the morning. Sitting on the bleachers, tall pine trees became the walls of the sanctuary and the ceiling was a dark star studded night sky.

The boys weren’t satisfied with the fire in the fire pit and built another close to the spot where they’d already erected their tent. Somewhere along our drive, they’d bought hot dogs and marshmallows. It was their plan to stay up late and snack on them. They could sleep during the drive in the morning and weren’t concerned that their laughter and noise would bother others, especially those who’d be driving the vans.

Despite several warnings, they kept the fire and laughter going until late or should I say early morning. In the morning when I woke, I talked to Joy another driver. She too was sleepy and tired because of the boys late night antics.

The boys were still asleep and we decided to lower the center frame of their tent, dropping its roof to a point where the guys couldn’t stand erect when they finally awoke. Unwittingly, we’d set into motion a civil war between the boys and girls. The boys blamed the girls and thus began a tit for tat of locked tent zippers, powdered sleeping bags, and shaving cream bombs.

But back to the sights of the campsite that morning, Apparently Pastor Johnston had gotten cold during the night and moved his sleeping bag closer to the fire pit. His bag was covered in gray flakes of wood ash. It looked as though it had snowed dingy snow during the night covering him and his sleeping bag.