Memorial Day Weekend 2010, Coolidge State Park, Plymouth, VT

Unplanned camping trips used to happen all the time for us when Liam we very young.  I would come home for lunch from Gird Lot Rd and decide with Donna that we were going to go camping in our little tent that night and at about 6 PM we would head off to Pillsbury State Park. 

With the camper we were not so spur of the moment,  But somewhere in  the back of my mind I knew that I was secretly planning on camping somehow this weekend.  I was thinking that we would probably end up at Mt Ascutney State Park or by some miracle, Silver Lake State Park in Bethel with a less than perfect site along the roadside.

We did all the stuff that we would do without going camping,  Donna and Liam went to pick up Cosmo our rabbit at the Vet, he had not been well, but was now doing much better.  Noah and I went to the dump and did a large pile of recycling,  Noah was great About doing the coupon hunt in the paper bin.  We came back with many we can use and a manual push mower.  We now have 3.

I began to look on the computer phone numbers for different Vermont State Parks.  Bomoseen was full, Silver Lake full, Woodford full and surprisingly Ascutney was also booked solid.  It was way too beautiful a weekend out there for people to let these great parks not be experienced to the full.  It was beginning to really look like we were not going to get to camp this weekend.  NO planning can sometimes be a problem.  I decided to call Coolidge State Park.  This campground we explored a couple of years ago.  It is a mountain in the town of Plymouth Vermont.  Hometown of the late Calvin Coolidge.  What I remembered of the park was that there were hills everywhere.  Dark shaded campsites never yielding to the sunlight.  They DID have a few sites available.  Obviously because they did because they were one of the lesser of Vermont State Parks.  I booked site 11, scared that this was a poor idea.  Donna called the Vet and I misunderstood that they wanted to charge us $250 for nursing the rabbit back to health.  I panicked and decided to cancel, but while on the phone with Ranger Bill, I told him were were coming probably around 8PM.

There were some things that needed to be done.  The jeep’s trailer harness was still butchered from the Bear Mountain State Park experience.  I knew that the power charging lead was inoperative.  So I cut up an extension cord and wires of an old battery charger and made a charging cable that clamped directly to the battery.  Then I make wires for the power inverter.  This way while we may be at a campground without hookups, we could still hook up the laptop and watch a movie if we want to.  I also had to sanitize the water system on the trailer. 

Evening began to fall and Donna and I pressed on with the packing etc.  After dark we finished loading up and we saddled up at ten o clock at night.  We drove up to Circle K and fueled up and I got a coffee.  Driving this late at night seemed to dictate that a 16 oz coffee was needed.  Later I would really regret this.  It was a nice night for a drive with the exception of us almost running over someone’s dog in Cavendish.  On the way up through, my work pager went off warning of problems on a brokered truck in California. 

We climbed the mountain into Coolidge State Park at 12:14 AM.  Donna was shuttering as we climbed the mountain because it was so steep and we were pulling a camper behind us.  We promptly found our campsite and backed into it.  I hopped out  and started the task of setting up in the dark.  This is alright too because our motto is, “If it ain’t dark, we haven’t arrived yet!”  So you may as well say I am very experienced in setting up in darkness.  It went very well and this time, the lights did work.  This time the refridgerator did light on propane mode.  What a contrast from Bear Mountain State Park last Month!  This time I was armed with knowledge, wisdom, jumper wires, cleaned tubes, prevention and a plan.

We got into bed and proceeded to listen to some very cool owls in the night, then we proceeded to listen to some very cool wolves too.  Then I got to lay there hour after hour since I drank a 16 oz coffee way too late at night!  I might have got MAYBE an hour of sleep when Noah woke up at 5 am and would not go back to sleep.  Finally at 5:30 I decided to surrender and get up with him.

Noah and I walked up the gravel road behind us while the birds filled the forest with a volume of song.  There were bathrooms up at the top of the hill but for some reason they were locked.  This is what you get for arriving in the middle of the night, no one there to fill you in on these details.  So we walked back down past our camper and down the road we took to get in last night.  There are 2 things that I like about arriving after dark.  One is that after everything is set up, Donna and I walk the boys to the nearest Bathroom and sort of drink in the camping neighborhood as we go.  The ride in starts to disintigrate in your mind and you begin to relax.  This was too late for that since both boys were sleeping.  But in the AM, you get to look at all the things that were under a cover of darkness last night.  Sometimes, it’s not quite what you had hoped, such as Lake Carmi 2 years ago and sometimes it is like this where there is not an ounce of disappointment in the discovery.  As Noah and I walked the road, I told him to listen to the sounds of the birds, to breathe deep the smells of the summery morning and feel the air.  To think about this some winter day when all the sounds are gone and it is just frozen.  I was hoping that even at 4 Noah could absorb the beauty of the moment.  He very often comes up with some very deep observations.

Bathroom stop and moth collection from the men’s room screen door put us back at the camper where we grabbed Asa and went for a walk in the other direction.  Since this road was a good climb, Noah soon transferred from walking to sitting on my shoulders, which is painful for me after a while, but my goodness, I love it and will be very sad when he is too big to do that anymore.

I love Vermont State Parks.  They are NOTHING like private campgrounds.  2 nights here cost $34, sites are spread far apart from each other and are much more rustic that the almost ministorage feel of commercial campgrounds.  Because there is no hookups, hardly ever do you see motor home types and slide outs.  You are more among the tenters  and tear drop campers.  They are a quieter breed.

When we neared the top of the hill, there were no more sites and we decided to turn around and make coffee back at the site.  Well the coffee was my idea but Noah and I picked up fire wood and we built a nice morning campfire.  Often we all wake up about the same time and have coffee and breakfast inside but there was something about today that made the outside experience just right. 

Donna and Liam got up and went to the bathroom.  Coffee was done when they returned.  When they came back, they had a very large moth that remained our pet on the tree for most of the rest of the weekend. 

Showers and hiking were next.  This campground was so beautiful, there was absolutely no “lesser” about it.  It was great.  The leanto’s were very rustic even built out of logs in some cases. There is one site on the opposite side of the campground that is totally breathtaking.  The leanto sits on the edge of a hill.  It overlooks a very deep valley which is overshadowed by two very severe mountains right beyond it.  What a site to enjoy your morning coffee on!

As usual when we hike, Noah does get tired and requires me to carry him on my shoulders, which I love.  After a while though it is so hard to take and I have to convince him to walk for a while.  When we returned to the camper, we made some pan fried spam, (keeping things simple) with cheese and toasted bread. 

I was tired.  It would have been wonderful to sleep at this point but I did not want to sleep such a beautiful day away and I cannot sleep during the day.  If I should fall asleep, it makes me feel groggy and terrible for the next four hours, so I am glad it didn’t happen.  There was only twice in my live that I got a taste of what life is like for the power nappers.  This was in Basic Training in the Army and during Desert Shield and Storm.  For some reason at those times I could just about sleep standing up and it felt refreshing. 

On one of our walks around the campground, the park rangers introduced Liam and Noah to the Junior Park Ranger Program.  A booklet full of learning and quizzes and actual nature tasks led to park ranger certification declaring that they become junior park rangers and receive a patch.  They loved this and the tasks were definitely more than just token activities.  Liam and Noah worked on this while were were on the site.

We took a ride down the mountain and over to Bridgewater.  Behind the store we went to there was a rib smokehouse and the smells were driving me CRAZY.  We refrained for mostly financial reasons.

When we returned to the camp we replenished our water supplies.  It was the best tasting water I have tasted in years!