Palisades

Every summer we would go out camping at Palisades State Park. Well, every year after my sisters and I started demanding we go camping somewhere with electricity and hot showers. And MAN, I have good memories of that place.

Camping with my family was like a military operation. Mom would be in charge of packing up the tent trailer. Dad would be in charge of loading up the boats and life jackets. Mom did the grocery shopping. Dad was the menu consultant. My sisters and I were responsible for packing our own bags, but we never ended up bringing what we wanted to bring. Mom would go through our bags and take out anything that she thought was "too nice" for camping, and make us take horrible old clothes that we hated.

Mom, dad, and the younger sisters would sleep in the tent trailer. Velecia, Angie, and I would sleep in the tent together. I still remember how slick it was, setting up and taking down our camp. We could get it done in about 20 minutes flat, because we all worked together as a team. And once we were set up, the fun began.

There were geese at Palisades, and they were pretty aggressive. There were also very cool trees, which grew at 45 degree angles to the ground. The geese chased us up those trees more than once when we ran out of bread to feed them.

But the best part of camping at Palisades was the floating dock in the middle of the reservoir. We would swim out to it (with life jackets, unless mom wasn't looking) and then sun-worship for all we were worth. We'd lay out on that dock until we were bone dry and toasty warm, then dive into the water to cool off. And start all over again.

Oh, the epic sunburns that resulted!

I remember one year Angie got so sunburned that her skin actually looked purple. And we had school pictures like three days after we got home.

Ok, so I know it was totally irresponsible of us to tan that much. Laying out was just so nice and relaxing. Mom warned us that we weren't doing our skin any good, but we were all so obsessed with having a good tan. And Palisades State Park definitely gave us that!