Black Hills once again

My dad is an adventurous 82-year-old who loves to camp. He and my mom, who is 76, have led six decades’ worth of camping trips with kids and grandkids and family friends. I’m the 54-year-old kid who decided to join the latest plan that dad hatched.

Last winter Dad wrote up an itinerary and sent it out to the bunch of us. MARILYN & DON, it said across the top. It began with the most beloved destination:

Black Hills, Lake Sheridan. Arrive afternoon of Wed. July 9th. Campground site unknown. Depart Saturday morning, fairly early, for Yellowstone…

Before we pulled out of Wausa, Mom and I tweaked the schedule to start with a visit at my brother’s in Gothenburg. So instead of crossing into South Dakota and heading northwest, we drove southwest across Nebraska and spent our first night with Dave and Kathy and Emily. Dad had to agree with this. His byword is “flexibility.”

Now we’ve had two nights at Sheridan Lake in a campground so familiar we could have walked here blindfolded. Our favorite site – Chipper Loop #86 – was occupied so we pitched our tents a couple sites up from the lake. But that was OK because we don’t have a boat along – one of many “firsts” for this trip.

Everything here is evocative – the scent of the pines, the extra-long picnic tables, the narrow road that loops through the campground. My siblings and I were small when Mom and Dad first loaded us into the station wagon for the long drive to “the Hills.” We water-skied here, we visited Mt. Rushmore, we learned the pleasures of living outdoors. Then our children came too, evolving from diapers to drivers’ licenses as the whole unwieldy group of us converged for a week of camping, swimming, waterskiing, and sitting around the campfire at night telling stories.

Now it’s only three of us, and there’s a memory at every turn. We see the rope still hanging from the tree where big kids and grandkids went swinging out over the water. Dad recounts (with great satisfaction) Daniel’s first time up on skis. Mom remembers the gash in Heather’s hand from her pocket knife. I recall how Kristy learned to ride Heather and Hanna’s unicycle. We laugh about the year that the girls formed a band for our evening entertainment, banging on the camping kettles with spoons and spatulas.

Dad tells me about a piece of his own boyhood that I’d never heard before – his first trip to the Black Hills. He came here with the Wausa Boy Scouts when he was thirteen. He didn't think he would be able to go because each boy had to pay five bucks, but at the last minute his parents came up with the money. Everyone piled into a truck for the trip out, and at night some of the boys slept in the truckbed with a canvas pulled over the top and some slept on the ground with a canvas tied between trees. “There’s a few things I remember about that trip,” my dad says like it happened last summer. “Number one: we ate a lot of beans.” The boys also had campfires and hikes, and one day they hiked up to Harney Peak and came upon a pond with lots of frogs. That night they ate frog legs. I did the math: Dad was born in 1925….It must have been 1938 when that troop of guys was farting around the campfire and having a grand time.

But nostalgia is only one slice of these days we’re living now. In the morning I padded down to the lake to swim before breakfast. Then Dad did what he loves to do – he cooked pancakes and eggs on a camp stove (but no bacon because Three Corners store was out of bacon when we arrived). Then we walked the trail that leads around our finger of the lake, Mom and Dad holding hands on the sloping trail and me trailing behind.

We do the same things but a little differently. For instance, we’re eating well at our campsite but also, frequently, in town. One night we ate out in Hill City, the next night at our traditional Powder House outside of Keystone. Back at our campsite, Dad built a blazing fire without bothering to wait for darkness. In fact, a bright sun was not quite setting when we sat by the fire. Our average age is closer to 70 than 17, so why not create a new plan? It was almost dark when Mom and Dad crawled into their tent, where their ancient double sleeping bag was waiting on their new air mattress. I was yawning too so I ducked into my tent with my Alaska REI bag that is way too warm for summer nights in this part of the country.

We ask for traveling mercies at the start of the day, and each day we receive an abundance. It’s part of the joy of hanging out with M & D. We have no HultCraft boat along this time, fewer family members, less chaos, but still plenty of fresh air and fun.