After exhausting ourselves with so much resting in the Shenandoah we pressed south for something like ten hours to Hunting Island State Park in South Carolina. I've always believed in the back edges of my soul that the south is a place of fascination and romance, what with the lichen covered trees and the heat and the butter laden food. Certainly, the longer we drove, the more desirous I was of acquiring for myself a peach--well, more than one--and adding to it butter and brown sugar along with heat, lots and lots of heat. Spending three nights did nothing to cast a shadow over my previous hopes and impressions. Probably if I lived there reality would ruin everything.
It was a very long drive--very very long, especially since when I initially plotted out the trip, I thought it would only be 8 hours. The difference between 8 and 10 for a car full of children turned out to be significant. Of course, stupidly, I promised over and over, with tears even, that No Other Drive would be longer than this one and then it turned out that almost every other drive was. What a failure I am, on so many occasions, to my children.
Fortunately, they recovered almost immediately after escaping from their prison of luxury (the car continues to be so comfortable) and despair (clearly we would never get to leave it).
Our tent takes a total of 4 1/2 minutes to assemble and anchor to the ground. We notched it in between these wonderfully exotic trees and cast about for a loo, which again, was Much Much Too Far Away.
The Peaches
The Water Spigot
The Baby In a Tub of Water
The Sitting Down for a Few Minutes and checking Facebook for the First Time in Days
The Feast
The Much Needed Vat of Vegetables After Accidentally Neglecting to Eat Them in Virginia
The Cessation of Whining For a Few Blessed Minutes
The Incredibly Beautiful and Vast Ocean
4 comments:
What your narrative reminds me of is the long camping trip the Austin family took in one of Madeleine L'Engle's Austin Family books (Meet the Austins, perhaps?) based on a trip her own family made one summer.
You have my endless admiration for not only camping with six kids but also for cooking real food and setting a real table. So when do you get YOUR vacation? :)
Oh wow, you look so thin! Now I'm quite jealous, haha. :D Looks like a great trip all in all. Haven't taken our kids camping at all, and now I'm feeling negligent. Did tons of it as a kid, but I'm always afraid here it will pour with rain, which is not ideal tent weather...
~R
I maintain that our "instant up" tent saved our marriage. Or at least saved our camping trips. They no longer start out with an argument over who is doing what wrong.
Also, we are lazy and don't want to walk to the restroom, but don't like camping near the restroom due to the constant traffic from other people as well as the bright lights shining into the tent while we try to sleep. So we went to Amazon and ordered the porta potty with the best reviews. It honestly does not leak or smell, and can be dumped reasonably neatly at either a dump station or into a toilet. It does take up precious cargo space, but if I was camping with that many little girls, I'd strap it to the roof, if I had to!
It is a long way from I-95 to the beach. But St. Helena's is a beautiful church. The Rev. Mason Locke Weems who wrote the cherry tree history of George Washington died in Beaufort and was buried at St. Helena's. He was one of the two Maryland clergy ordained under a special act of Parliament after the Revolution. That act was the model for the 1787 act that permitted the consecrations of White and Provoost and later Madison for Virginia. For a while it was not clear that orthodox New England and the revisionist mid-Atlantic and South would be one church, but William White wanted union and was willing to compromise. Would that all subsequent Presiding Bishops were as wise.
Tom Rightmyer Asheville NC
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