There are few things in life more dangerous than the first camping trip of the season.
Your trailer has been sitting all winter collecting dust and mysterious smells. Half your gear has vanished into the same dimension as single socks and TV remotes. Nobody remembers where anything is. And every family member is absolutely *certain* that someone else packed the important stuff — a belief they will maintain confidently right up until the moment you need the important stuff.
This year we added one extra ingredient to the chaos: a teenager with almost no internet access.
What could possibly go wrong?
*Everything.* Everything could go wrong. But in the funniest possible way, so at least we’d have content.
The trailer was washed, the cupboards were packed with enough food to survive the apocalypse *plus* a lengthy legal dispute about it, and the truck was filled with what I’m fairly certain is now the most expensive gasoline in recorded human history. We were officially ready for our annual Mother’s Day camping trip and the grand kickoff to the 2026 season.
Our trailer is lovingly nicknamed The Tardis because I’m a massive Doctor Who fan and because it genuinely becomes larger on the inside once the slide opens. On the outside it looks like a normal trailer. On the inside it’s a tiny rolling apartment stuffed with snacks, blankets, charging cords, and at least fourteen objects nobody remembers purchasing.
The plan was elegant in its simplicity.
Son gets home from school at 3:00 PM.
We leave at 3:30 PM.
Everybody’s a hero.
We pulled out of the driveway at 4:57 PM, because punctuality is something our family only engages with as a theoretical concept.
For this trip I tried using an RV GPS for the first time, which I now believe was programmed by someone who has never seen a truck, a trailer, or a road built after 1947. It routed us through tiny winding Canadian back roads clearly designed for one horse and a moderately ambitious bicycle.
At several points I occupied both lanes simultaneously like a confused parade float while a growing line of traffic stacked up behind me, unable to pass, unwilling to make eye contact. I just kept creeping forward, knuckles white, gripping the steering wheel like I was piloting a cruise ship through a drainage ditch and hoping everyone behind me had flexible dinner plans.
Meanwhile, Meg attempted to complete the online campground check-in on her phone.
Then her phone slid onto the floor.
AI Pic – Meg didn’t want to re-enact looking for her cell phone
Now, pregnancy bladder physics apparently prevented her from bending down to retrieve it — which is a completely valid and understandable constraint — but she was simultaneously too busy providing detailed commentary on my driving playlist to communicate this in any way my brain could process.
So I pulled into the gatehouse, checked us in the old-fashioned way, and grabbed two bags of firewood with help from my son, who has a passionate and frankly *concerning* enthusiasm for starting fires. If civilization ever collapses, he’ll either save us all or become the campground’s most dramatic supervillain. Possibly both.
Mercifully, there was no lineup at the water fill station.
A camping miracle. We noted it in the records.
We found our site while it was still daylight — second miracle — and the setup crew sprang into action. Grandma wisely remained in the truck because the temperature had dropped below what she considers acceptable conditions for human life. Regular readers of this blog already know that Grandma treats anything below room temperature as a personal attack by the natural world, and she was not about to negotiate with weather.
My son helped disconnect the trailer and hook up the power while I ran through the sacred RV setup checklist:
Trailer level? ✓
Stabilizers down? ✓
Slide extended? ✓
Everyone suddenly sprinting for the bathroom because nobody wanted me to stop during the drive? *Also* ✓
Look. Once I’m in the driving groove, I’m in the groove. The music’s rolling, road hypnosis has engaged, and bladder management becomes a personal responsibility exercise for everyone else in the vehicle. This is disclosed upfront and non-negotiable.
Friday night dinner was Dylan’s famous burgers, cooked with the quiet confidence of a tiny campground Gordon Ramsay — minus the yelling, minus the existential despair, and minus the Michelin inspector lurking somewhere nearby.
We inhaled them.
Partly because they were excellent. Mostly because we had forgotten road snacks.
That’s right. *Road snacks.* The single most critical item in the entire road trip ecosystem. No chips. No candy. No beef jerky. Not one blessed crinkle-cut anything. The cupboards were apocalypse-ready and somehow we had managed to pack zero items for the actual journey to the apocalypse.
The departure checklist will be updated. ROAD SNACKS will appear at the top. In bold. In red. Possibly laminated.
Since it was getting late and snack trauma had depleted our emotional reserves, we skipped the campfire and played board games instead while I climbed into bed first and apparently treated the trailer to a full live performance of my legendary snoring.
I’ve personally never heard it.
I’m choosing to believe everyone is exaggerating for dramatic effect.
AI Pic – Since there’s no proof that I snore
The next morning Meg was up before sunrise, walking the dog while I remained in a state of heroic unconsciousness. I have a vague memory of hearing movement. I have a crystal-clear memory of immediately falling back asleep.
Two hours later, the smell of coffee dragged me back to the living.
I sat outside with two cups, listening to birds, pretending to be at one with nature instead of being a middle-aged man whose brain requires caffeine the way a car requires fuel — not as a preference, but as a load-bearing structural requirement.
Dylan fired up our new Blackstone griddle and produced pancakes for everyone, which established him as the morning MVP and secured his position in the family hierarchy.
This is when we discovered the atrocity.
Meg had accidentally made *decaf* coffee.
*Decaf.*
At a campground.
I don’t fully remember the next few minutes. There was shock. There was a period of quiet grief. Somehow I located the espresso and brewed a batch strong enough to restart a stopped heart and possibly achieve minor time travel. Crisis averted. Damage to the timeline: minimal.
Around this point, Dylan began entering the early stages of technology withdrawal.
The campground had virtually no cell signal. No internet. No streaming. No social media. As a finishing touch, I had accidentally forgotten the batteries for the TV remote, turning the television into a very expensive decorative rectangle.
You could practically hear his nervous system file a complaint.
So he bounced between projects with the focused energy of an overstimulated raccoon who just discovered a dumpster full of shiny objects.
First: the hammock. Strung it up. Excellent work.
Then I discovered a tick crawling on my hand while helping him hang it. Tiny. I flicked it away immediately and congratulated myself on surviving another skirmish with nature.
*This confidence would later prove to be catastrophically premature.*
Five minutes after the hammock, Dylan installed his Ninja Line — essentially a giant ratchet strap suspended between two trees with hanging obstacles specifically engineered to destroy both your forearms and your dignity within the same four-foot span. He lasted approximately five minutes before declaring that his hands hurt and retreating dramatically to his bunk like a Victorian aristocrat who’d been briefly asked to do manual labour.
I appreciated the silence. I said nothing.
Meg and I went hiking on the nearby trail. Since I’m still recovering from ACL surgery courtesy of my military days, I moved at a more contemplative pace and upgraded myself with a sturdy pine branch walking stick that made me feel like a wise but slightly winded forest wizard.
The trail was genuinely beautiful — winding hills, carpet of leaves, spectacular views, and roots positioned with what I can only describe as *personal malice* toward ankles.
About an hour in, we met another couple hiking with their dog. Checkers acted like he’d discovered a long-lost brother. We learned, through pleasant conversation, that the bridge ahead was out — another six kilometers away.
We looked at each other.
We looked at my knee.
My knee looked back and very quietly shook its head.
We turned around. Correct decision. My knee was already drafting a formal memo to management about the current working conditions.
I should also mention that Meg carried a Thermacell bug repellent clipped to her back pocket the entire hike while providing a continuous commentary on the bugs flying into her face.
I can confirm there were zero bugs on her backside.
The product worked perfectly. The user just had opinions about the coverage zone.
Back at camp around 2 PM, we were running on fumes. Lunch was cheese sandwiches, mini muffins, and apple fritter cookies — the nutritional strategy of elite athletes who have simply stopped caring.
Afterward, my knee politely requested ice and horizontal positioning, so I lay down for a brief rest.
I woke up two hours later having achieved a nap of almost clinical depth. While I was unconscious, Meg and Grandma had transformed the picnic table into a fully operational arts-and-crafts convention. Paint supplies everywhere. Mother’s Day bonding activities in full swing. The whole operation apparently ran smoothly without me, which I’m choosing to interpret as a compliment.
That evening Dylan constructed a flawless log cabin fire — the kid has skills, I’ll give him that — while Meg wrapped potatoes in foil and buried them in the coals. Then she and Grandma departed for what was described as “a quick walk.”
They were gone for a very long time.
Long enough that I began to wonder if they’d accidentally crossed a provincial border.
They returned eventually, exhausted, having taken a wrong turn somewhere and completed an unplanned tour of approximately half the campground. Perfect timing, though — the potatoes were done, the fire was glorious, and nobody had to go looking for them with a flashlight.
We ate the potatoes alongside an entire tub of ice cream because camping calories are scientifically exempt from normal accounting. This is established nutritional law. I will not be taking questions.
By the end of the evening, every human and animal at the campsite had been completely destroyed by the day. Even Checkers — a dog who normally levitates off the ground at the mere *syllable* “wa—” — barely opened one eye when we mentioned a walk.
That’s how you know it was a good day.
I handled the nightly security sweep: chairs folded, food secured, everything locked down against raccoons, bears, squirrels, and whatever small criminal enterprises operate after dark in Ontario campgrounds.
Then the trailer erupted.
Grandma dropped her pills.
*Everywhere.*
Into the sink. Into the dog’s water bowl. Into the microscopic architectural crevices that RV designers apparently include specifically for this scenario. Tiny purple pills achieved distances and trajectories that defied reasonable physics.
For the next solid hour we played pharmaceutical hide-and-seek, crawling around on our hands and knees, counting under our breath, trying to determine if we had recovered all of them or if some were simply living in the walls now.
Eventually the calculator came out. Math was performed. Breath was held.
Every single pill was accounted for.
Fresh water for the dog. Disaster averted. Another entry in the unofficial camping miracle log.
AI used to zoom in on the little bugger, since he didn’t want to sit still for the camera
That night, rain tapped peacefully on the trailer roof. Everyone passed out from exhaustion by 9:30 PM like a campground full of responsible adults.
Then came 3 AM.
Nature called. I stumbled half-asleep into the bathroom and noticed a dark spot on my hand. Without my glasses, I assumed it was dirt. I flicked at it.
It did not flick.
I put my glasses on.
The tick I had so smugly dispatched earlier had apparently phoned for backup. Because there, latched onto my hand like a tiny bloated vampire raisin with absolutely no intention of leaving, was a fully attached, fully committed, fully *fed* tick.
Meg woke up instantly and entered full nurse mode, deploying the tick removal tool with professional calm. The angle was tricky. After a minute of delicate maneuvering, my sleep-deprived caveman brain reached its patience limit.
*Pop.*
Out came the tick.
One firm squish and he was promoted directly to Tick Heaven, where I hope he reflects on his choices.
Back in bed, every single itch for the next forty-five minutes felt like another tick. My brain, now fully awake and absolutely uninterested in sleep, began running a tick threat assessment on every sensation. I eventually caved and started playing Sudoku on my phone until exhaustion beat paranoia in a close match.
I know I finally fell asleep because I later discovered I had entered completely incoherent numbers into the puzzle — the kind of Sudoku moves that suggest not sleep so much as brief unconscious breakdown.
Sunday morning. Peanut butter sandwiches for me, Nutella for everyone else. Regular dog food for Checkers, who stared at our sandwiches with the expression of someone who has been deeply wronged and intends to remember it.
That’s when I spotted it.
A power cord. Snaking out from Dylan’s bunk.
I gave it a gentle tug.
On the other end: his phone.
The brilliant little opportunist had realized — sometime during his technology withdrawal spiral — that he didn’t need internet access to play offline games. He had been in there quietly thriving the whole time.
Teenagers are genuinely impressive. If civilization falls, they will survive through sheer adaptability, hidden charging ports, and the ability to communicate an entire emotional range through a single raised eyebrow.
The teardown crew assembled for final duties. Chairs folded. Hoses drained. The Forgotten Items List updated with fresh humiliations for next trip. The road snack situation added to the checklist in permanent marker.
And just like that, the first camping weekend of 2026 was over.
We drove home exhausted, sore, slightly sunburned, mildly traumatized by ticks, pharmaceutical hide-and-seek veterans, and already deep in conversation about where we’re going next.
Which is, I think, the only definition of a perfect camping trip that actually matters.
*Do your kids turn feral after six hours without Wi-Fi, or do they surprise you with secret offline survival strategies? And please — PLEASE — tell me I’m not the only one who’s forgotten road snacks. Drop your camping disasters, your unexpected victories, and your “what were we thinking?” moments in the comments. We’re all out here doing our best.*