Recently I was talking to my 9 year old, Max. It is summer now and I mentioned that we hadn’t started planning what we will be doing. I asked him what he would like. He said,

“I want to go camping.”

“Great idea. Where do you want to camp?”

“At Mount Washington.”

“I like that. And what do you want to do when we are there?”

“Take the cog railway to the top of the mountain.”

“You know, I think that is a great plan. Why don’t we do it.”

“When?”

“We will leave on Thursday.” Today was Sunday.

Max was excited; he couldn’t wait.

I didn’t tell him I had already planned the trip to Mount Washington in Northern New Hampshire on Thursday. We would camp out overnight and take the train up the mountain on Friday morning. I had already bought the train tickets and scheduled the campsite. Except for packing we were all set to go.

Isn’t it nice we think alike?

Because Max is still in school and has afternoon programs it was my job to pack and get ready. I cleaned and packed the tent and sleeping bags, food, water, and clothes. But then of course there were other things that Max wanted to take. By the time the car was loaded it looked like we were going for a week instead of one night.

And then there were his meds. I was a little worried about how I was going to keep track of all of them. My wife came up with a great idea. She bought a box of those small yellow envelopes. She then loaded them up with the correct dosages. After that she labeled them with their days and times. Perfect.

I suppose it would have been easy if Max’s meds were all the same each time of day but they are set up so that he gets different ones at different times. Not only that some of them have to be cut in half. The envelopes worked great!

Since we were leaving on Thursday he ended up missing two days of school. Generally this would be a problem because he loves going but this was a special case. He was genuinely excited about going north.

The drive took 3 hours so we were both ready to relax when we got there. As we went to check in at the camp I noticed Max was getting worried. I asked him what the problem was and he pointed to several signs posted around the door. We were in bear country. These were warnings to watch out for them.

I spoke to the camp owner and he assured me that he hadn’t seen a bear come through in two years. That was great but a short time later Max was talking to his kids. They informed him that they saw one every day during the school year. They would pass it on the bus as they passed through the next town over. Apparently the residents were feeding it. It seemed like they were trying to make it a pet. But if they weren’t careful they would be in for a rude awakening. Bears don’t make good pets.

We spent the afternoon swimming in the pool and Max made friends. One little girl he met was disappointed. It seems that her older sister had been the one to encounter the camp bear two years before. She wanted to see one too but it hadn’t happened yet. Her family only had two days left at their campsite.

Dinner was fun; not really. I had set up the grill to cook hot dogs and beans but it took over an hour just to get the coals hot enough. I always use a chimney to get things going since I don’t use lighter fluid. It generally takes 20 minutes before the food goes on. That night it took over an hour to get a half way decent fire.

While I was waiting to cook Max kept bringing new friends over to see what was happening so they got to see the non-cook at work.

After dinner and some ice cream that we got at the camp store Max was ready for bed. He was asleep by 8:00. Not having anything else to do I turned in and was asleep by 8:30. I ended up waking at midnight and just lay there thinking about bears. I kept imagining them snuffling around the tent.

In the meantime my son was restless. He kept sitting up, looking around, and then lying down. Several times he would call me; convinced I was gone. I would calmly tell him I was still there sleeping beside him.

In the morning we struggled awake and ate breakfast. After that we headed out to the Mt Washington Cog Railway to ride up the mountain. This was sort of a compromise. We really wanted to ride the train even though we had the options of driving up or climbing. I had been told it was too scary by car and climbing could take a very long time.

The drive from the campsite to the mountain is gorgeous. We were in the middle of the Presidential Range which is in the northern most part of the White Mountains. Every where you look there is a mountain or a steep hill covered in greenery.

The one draw back is that there is not alot of cell phone service. We learned that if you are driving and you find a connection pull over quickly. It can be lost just as quickly as it was found. When we discovered one we called Mom to tell her what was going on.

We had to let her know that plans had changed. Originally after the train ride we were going to head home but we decided to stay one more night. She liked this idea since it meant more time for her to relax. And luckily she had packed extra meds just in case.

After that we continued on the road to the train. When I planned the trip I made sure that our stops weren’t too complicated. The camp was 10 miles from the highway on a smaller road and the train was another 10 miles off the same road. So everything was easy.

After the train it was more swimming and playing at the camp. I tried to cook again that night but I couldn’t get the coals working at all so Max and I decided to go out for dinner. We found a nice family restaurant, ate, and then returned to camp for another ice cream. I was able to keep my son up a little later that night but we were both asleep by 9.

It was another restless night for both of us. It didn’t help that a family with two large dogs arrived in the evening to start their vacation. The dogs barked and the people partied until 4 in the morning. Now mind you it wasn’t just a bunch of kids. It was Mom and Dad, Grandma, and two teenagers. All were up having a good time.

During the night they wandered up and down the camp roads talking and shining their flashlights into the tents. It seems that one of them had had too much to drink and kept crashing into things; apologizing as they went. I didn’t mind too much because I figured that the noise was keeping away the bears.

Then the rain started; it was about 3 am. I could hear it pelting against the tent as it fell. Max slept through it until about 5. He really needed to go to the bathroom so we climbed out of the tent. Since we didn’t bring any rain gear with us we threw towels over our heads and headed out.

The rain had been coming down so hard we found that everything was flooded. Max and I slogged to the restrooms in 4 inch of deep water. When we got done we headed back to our tent where we found that the site had also flooded and everything including the tent was soaked.

We packed everything up and stowed it all in the car. And then we sat huddled in it until the office opened at 8. During that time we noticed that in the next site over the dogs were missing; the tents were gone; and the two pickup trucks had disappeared.

I assumed that they couldn’t handle the rain and had left long before us. After we got home someone suggested that maybe they had been thrown out for all of the noise. There was a rule after all that quiet time was from 9 at night to 7 in the morning. They certainly weren’t quiet.

It was a wonderful trip though the rain put a damper on our last day. Our revised plan had been to spend the morning swimming before checking out at noon. After that we were going to stop at a place called “The Basin” to do some hiking. We were expecting to get home by 4 in the afternoon.

However, with all of the torrential down pours we headed straight for home and arrived at 11 o’clock.

My regular readers may have noticed that this post was a little different than most. Generally I talk about Max’s disorders or some other illness that is being addressed. Except for the mention of medications at the beginning there was nothing to talk about.

My son thrived on being out in the wilderness. I can almost imagine him living outside permanently when he is older. There were no upsets; he just had fun.

Except for the fact that Dad was a little grumpy, everything was perfect.