I Survived My Camping Trip!

Photo of a blue tent crushed beneath the weight of a large fallen tree limb.

Over the weekend I made the long* trip up to Maine to join my sister and her family for a camping trip to celebrate her birthday, and I lived to tell the tale . . . just barely. That photo above is my tent as it appeared on Saturday morning, thankfully a couple of hours after I was in it. My sister and I were at the campsite when we heard a noise, and turned around to see that dramatic scene. My tent bounced right back up, thankfully.

We spent the weekend at the Sandy Pines campground near Kennebunkport, Maine, which was full of amenities including a bocce court and a swimming pool both of which we made use of.

Here’s me and my nephew cleaning up after our bocce game:

Photo of me and my nephew loading bocce balls into a canvas tote bag.

And here’s our camping crew on our way to the pool:

Photo of five people dressed for going swimming standing in front of a large boulder in a wooded area.

The campground was also in walking distance to Goose Rocks Beach so we hiked over there on a foggy Saturday morning, and in keeping with my travel adventures for the weekend the walk ended up being about a mile longer than it needed to be thanks to heading in the wrong direction at first. But we did get to see some ducklings who were getting swimming lessons from their mamas and riding the waves at the beach, which was pretty cool:

Photo of ducks and ducklings swimming in the ocean on a gray day.

Saturday afternoon my cousin Lauren and her boyfriend Ryan swung by to join us at the pool and then have a campfire-cooked dinner with us. I haven’t seen Lauren in years, so it was so nice to see her. Here’s a shot of the cousins standing in front of the salt marsh that was right across from our campsite:

Photo of three middle-aged women standing in front of a salt marsh.

That’s me, my sister Emily and my cousin Lauren. You can’t see him in this photo, but there was a snowy egret hanging out in the salt marsh.

Dinner on Saturday was hot dogs, well a veggie dog for yours truly with some s’mores for dessert. My niece found the perfect marshmallow roasting stick:

Photo of a young man and a young woman sitting in camp chairs by a camp fire. The young woman is holding a branch with three prongs. There's a marshmallow skewered on each prong.

Saturday night long after we had retired to our tents for the night we were woken by bright flashes of light, and not so distant thunder. As I lay awake in my tent I did the whole trick of counting the Mississippis between the lightning and the boom. I began to grow nervous as the number of Mississippis went down from nine to five, but thankfully it got no closer. I thought about that fallen tree limb, and was so glad that Mother Nature decided to bless us with some free fire wood on Saturday morning rather than having that thing fall on me during Saturday night’s storm. In her tent my sister was thinking about that fallen branch too, as she covered her head with her arm and tried to get back to sleep.

Sunday it was time to pack up our damp belongings, and for me to make the long trip home. I made better time than I did on Friday, but it was definitely not a traffic-free journey.

— Alissa

* In an ideal world the trip should have taken me 6 hours, but I have determined through extensive trial and error that it is physically impossible to drive from New Jersey to Maine without hitting traffic so it ended up being more like 9 hours.