Nickell’s Bag

They say that sometimes, the best-laid plans go to waste. Really, though, I’m not sure we had the best-laid plans in the first place. Oh, we had our beer and camping gear, some fishing rods and folf discs, and even a destination in mind: Lake Alva, where – presuming we could find a campsite – we would spend an extended Fourth of July weekend with our good friends, Cliff and Mo, and their 10-year-old daughter, Monroe.

Then, just as we were picking up our last supplies on the way out of town, the phone rang.

“Jo-Jo, we have a problem.”

It was Cliff.

“My dad’s in the hospital up in Kalispell,” he said. “I guess he fell down a flight of stairs and broke some ribs. I’m gonna have to take the camper up there and spend the weekend looking after him. If you guys want to come, you’re welcome, but I’m not guaranteeing it’ll be fun.”

With our truck already packed to the roof, it hardly made sense to back out. So a few minutes later, my wife and I, along with our 3-year-old son, Julian, found ourselves on the road northward, without a map and with only the vaguest mental lay of the land around Kalispell. It was still Thursday; surely, we figured, we could find a place to camp before Friday’s mass rush to the woods.

Ha.

By early evening, we had driven through or called every state and private campground around Kalispell. We finally found a motel and campground that had a spot where we could plunk the tent and camper. When we drove around back, we discovered why.

Next to our spot, a parade of suspiciously emaciated, glassy-eyed people meandered in and out of a single-wide trailer that seemed to be sinking into the ground.

I noticed a pit bull across the gravel drive, next to a battered, immobile camper with skirting fashioned out of old doors.

“Son,” I said to Julian, “I want you to stay away from that dog.”

“Why, Daddy?”

“Well,” I said, “because we don’t know him, and he might not be nice.”

“I think he’s nice, Daddy.”

I started making phone calls. About an hour later, I reached an acquaintance who lives on the Whitefish River between Kalispell and Whitefish. I explained our situation.

“Sure, you can camp out here,” he said. “The mosquitos might be bad, though.”

The word “bad” can mean many things. For Michael Jackson, it actually meant “awesome.” Upon arriving at our new campsite overlooking the Whitefish River, we discovered that it meant “Holy Crap, I’m Going to Be Airlifted Away By a Billion Tiny Bloodsuckers.”

Thus began a five-day odyssey of absurdity that would have made Clark Griswold proud. Julian threw up all over his only warm jacket. It rained. The tent leaked. It rained more. Julian decided that bedtime didn’t count on camping trips, and yet somehow managed to wake us at first light.

All of that happened on the first night, mind you.

We tried to make the best of it. We managed to pass the better part of one day at the underwhelming mall in Kalispell. We drove through the bear pen in Columbia Falls, and Monroe seemed to genuinely enjoy her tour of the Montana Vortex and House of Mystery.

Julian found his thrills in smaller things. Beset by a torrential cloudburst in Hungry Horse, we ducked into the town’s liquor store, where the proprietor entertained Julian with a homemade gumball machine and gave him a blinking bicycle light emblazoned with a Jägermeister logo. That night, Cliff and Mo gifted DaLynn a battery-powered mosquito repeller – which Julian promptly claimed as his favorite toy of the trip, chasing the “mokitos” all around our campsite.

And on Sunday night, along with millions of Americans across the country, we blew some stuff up. Julian, however, wasn’t nearly as interested in the pricey fireworks as he was in the cheap bag of glow sticks that we brought along.

Monday morning, we began packing up our gear to head home. As I disassembled the tent, Julian walked up to me quietly.

“Daddy,” he said in his most pleading voice, “I don’t want to go home. Can we go camping some more, please?”

Maybe in a few weeks, I thought to myself. But at this point, I need a vacation.

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