An early favorite

Here's one of my early Herald favorites, about our annual camping trip to Elizabeth. I probably could write about this trip every year, but I don't know what kind of broad appeal it would have. It originally ran in October, 2002.

The tradition is simple — fathers and sons enjoying time together in the great outdoors.

On a personal level, it’s something I’ve been doing with my best friend, Nick, and our dads since we were both 5 years old. We only missed one year — senior year in college when Nick was studying science in Tennessee.

It started as a pack of six, with other family friends from Wyoming, Iowa. But family shifts subtracted them from the equation by the time we all got to junior high.

The campsite has been several places — for years it was an Elizabeth pasture owned by my grandparents, a place where my dad use to camp as a Boy Scout and where my uncle rode his motorcycle, shot guns and built a small house in the trees. We kept using the site even after the land was sold to a fellow suburbanite. He charged us $2 a night and sometimes sat around the campfire with us telling life stories that were hard to believe but even harder to make up.

One year we didn’t get the pasture and we found a patch of grass just down the road from my grandparents farmhouse, yards away from the old Weston cemetery. That pasture has been sold again, and for two years we’ve found good earth on the dairy farm of my dad’s cousin, Chuck.

We used to go as part of a summer vacation, which always included trips to Apple Canyon Lake for boating, fishing and swimming. Those summer trips also seemed to always include hiking through the Palisades in Savanna, or a visit to Story Brook in Hanover where three young boys would get to watch their big fathers golf. On the holes away from the road and the clubhouse, those boys sometimes got to drive the golf carts.

As young boys, our breakfasts and dinners were always cooked over the open fire, with my grandparents coming down to join us. On lucky times the event would fall over my mid-August birthday, or perhaps when my uncle was in town (a rarer occurrence when he moved from Wisconsin to Montana. Now we’ve learned that breakfast is much better bought in downtown Elizabeth, though trips for good deals have been made to Galena and Dubuque. And instead of bringing the party to the pasture, we bring the food to the farmhouse.

Young boys soon become young men, something the fathers probably know better than the sons. For the past couple of years, we’ve golfed with our dads instead of just keeping score. We can all drink beer and talk about work or the college we all graduated from. This year I was the third married man at the campfire. In 2001, I asked Nick to be my best man as we packed up camp. Just last Sunday, he returned the favor. With a wedding date of Sept. 25, 2004, however, we’re going to need to schedule camping a little earlier than usual… and his future Mrs. will have to understand.

Some times the camping weekends were highlighted by planned excursions — canoeing the Apple River from Elizabeth to Hanover, a trip to see the Chicago Bears train in Platteville, Wis., or pilgrimages to the Field of Dreams in Dyersville. But in these later years as the trips move later into September and less is happening, we tend to simply show up and see what’s going on. These are the trips that are truly magical.

Less than a week before we left for college, the four of us found ourselves attending a weekend of races: Dogs and dragonboats in Dubuque and downhill BMX riders at Galena’s Chestnut Mountain. Just last year we finished breakfast — still with no itinerary — then spent the day at Mallardfest in Hanover.

Our timing can be unexpectedly excellent. In 1994 we visited the Field of Dreams just after the baseball strike began. In 2001, the Mallardfest Parade was a true patriotic experience just four days after terrorists rocked our country.

The 2002 camping weekend just concluded. The only item on the itinerary was planting two volunteer maple trees in my in-laws’ Fulton, Ill., back yard. On the way down, however, we decided to stop in at the Thomson, Ill., flea market. Once we got to Fulton, we decided to enjoy our lunch at Eagle Point Park overlooking the pools of Lock and Dam 13. After years and years of the tri-state area, we found that Clinton and Whiteside Counties are also beautiful and interesting. Future excursions may bring us to Heritage Canyon, De Immigrant windmill or perhaps on a river cruise on the Mississippi Belle II. My living in Fulton and working in Clinton is beginning (note: I'm not sure what happened to the original copy here. Hopefully this lapse never costs me a Pulitzer.)

Some things never change. Only once have we had to break camp and sleep on my grandparents living room floor. Only once did we have to start Saturday morning and not Friday night. And never have we been happy to break camp on Sunday and return to the real world.

My dad noted Friday that we never really took pictures of the things we do, and I kind of like it that way. We can watch ourselves grow up in school portraits or holiday snapshots. But camping belongs to us — the memories in each of our minds are more than enough to build up excitement for next year’s experience.

Although the longest I ever stayed in Elizabeth was about a week, all of our excursions in and around the area have helped it to feel like home. That’s why I was excited to move back here from Independence. What a wonderful place to make memories and share life, building bonds that can withstand the test of any time or distance.

Here, in the rural farm land and banks of the great river, we are home, and we are happy. And that can never change.