"The Charbor Chronicles": Camping on Columbus Day Weekend

One thing that I felt badly about this year was not having taken my son on a camping trip. Camping had become an annual tradition between us, and one which I was both proud of and happy about.

To me, this is quality shared time. Time well spent, enjoying some of the things that truly matter the most in life. Enjoying the great outdoors, talking and relaxing in front of a nice fire, under a canopy of stars on a clear night. You are in the woods, or at least outdoors, away from your everyday, modern life, with everyday, modern concerns and stress. For at least a little while, you are reconnecting with your natural senses, and almost everything, almost every sense, seems enhanced: your sense of hearing (you feel like you hear every noise in the woods at night), your sense of taste (things just seem to taste better when eaten outside), your sense of smell and even of touch.

It is pleasant.

We had gone camping the last few years, but despite enjoying a lot of spectacular outdoors places in Arizona earlier this year, we still had not gone camping, and it bothered me.

Then, I started thinking after noticing that he had off on Columbus Day, and realizing that I, too, had off. The thought that this might be the last chance to get some camping in this calendar year began to make me feel excited.

So I began to look for places, and found some decent prospects. One of the main ideas was to find some camping near Philadelphia and then to enjoy the city during the following day. But the options for camping there were limited and surprisingly pricey, so that was scratched. There were other camping options, however. The one that really caught my eye the most was this one place in Montague, New Jersey, called Rockpoint Campgrounds.

It had been a few years since the last time that I visited Montague, a place that used to figure more prominently in my life. As a kid, we used to pass by all of the time, and spent quite a bit of time exploring High Point State Park, during several visits. As a young man in college, my then girlfriend (now ex-wife) and I invited a whole bunch of people over for a get-together that proved very successful, for which I was glad.

However, there came a point when, for some reason, I just did not go there much any longer, even though it was nice. Perhaps it is not surprising that this coincided with the death of my grandparents, since one of the main reasons that we would traverse across Route 23 to get to their home in Liberty, New York. That, and we found another way up Route 17 (now Route 86) and to the old Route 17 in New York, which leads to Route 17 in New Jersey (I always thought it ridiculous that they had so many damn Route 17's) in such a small space.

Anyway, one way or the other, the visits to Sussex County and High Point in the northwestern most extreme of the Garden State became extremely infrequent, to the point that I had not even taken my son there yet.

This campsite would fix that much, at least.

So, I found Rockview Valley Campground, which remains open until October 15th, which meant that we just made it under the gun. They were already preparing for the end of their season and a long hiatus before reopening again next year, when the weather turns warm once again.

My son and I had a pleasant enough experience, that we spoke about coming back. It was a lot of fun!

There was a game room, and we played a lot of ping pong. There were video games as well, and he really wanted to play those. We got to watch a bit of the Giants-49ers game while playing and resting, which was kind of cool, as well. True, it took away from the feeling of this being a camping session, although it was also a day off, almost like a vacation day. And I felt that I had earned it, having just completed the busiest workweek of my life, at least in terms of hours worked. I had worked overnights and followed with work shifts during the day in five of the previous seven days and had not had a day off in well over a week, and was feeling the exhaustion now. Monday and Tuesday, I had worked the overnight job, then subbed. Wednesday, just the overnight job. Thursday, the overnight job and the weekend job, where I have a shift on Thursday from 8am until 4pm. On Friday, I subbed again. On both Saturday and Sunday, I worked the overnights, followed by weekend job shifts. It was exhausting!

So, I needed a rest. But the dilemma was that I wanted to make sure to do some cool, fun things with my son, and camping was definitely one of them. There were places that I wanted him to visit, and Monday seemed like the perfect opportunity to get all of that done. So, I tried.

We arrived at the camp just before it got dark, but since I had taken a cabin, we did not have to set up a tent, or anything. Just unpacked, and then headed to the game room, since the campfire would not be a good idea, I thought, until we were there to stay, to wait until it died down, or we could put it out, and then go to bed. We played a lot of ping pong, and my son started to actually get good. I could see him improving, which was very cool! We watched the Giants game, which remained on in the background.

We spent some hours there, and when we were done, we struggled in the dark, trying not to trip over roots and other obstacles along the rocky road back to the cabin. But we got there, and then started a nice fire.

It was enjoyable, although in the dark, we could not find the graham crackers, which we would have needed to make S'mores. As a result, when he requested the next morning, I allowed him to make and eat S'mores for a makeshift breakfast when we built another campfire to warm up during the chilly morning. Yes, that is not exactly the action that will win me the prestigious Father of the Year award, or anything, but it was all in good fun. How often do you get the chance to enjoy things like that while camping, especially when your first (and only) camping trip of the year comes in mid-October?

So, camping was fun. We played a lot of ping pong, enjoyed two campfires book ending a chilly night, and he played on a playground a little bit, the first time that he had played on a playground in probably over a year. He just had seemed disinterested, so this was a little bit of a flashback to his younger childhood, which made me feel happy that he is not growing up too quickly.

After the playground, we went back to the cabin, where I pretty quickly took a snooze. When I woke up, my son was on the top of the bunk bed in the cabin (he wanted me to sleep on the bottom bunk, but I slept on the queen bed instead). Apparently, I was not the only one who was tired and needed to catch up on rest. Not wanting to wake up, I still had to start packing up, because our time camping had come to an end, at least for this year.

Before too long, my son woke up as well, and it was time to start to get the day going. I mentioned how impressed I was with this campground, and that I would definitely be looking into coming back in the future, even if for a free night or two.

We left the camp, and then drove through Port Jervis. It was not easy going, since the roads were being torn apart due to construction. Otherwise, it looked very much the same as I remembered it from all of those years ago. On the other side of it, we headed up Route 97 towards Deer Park, where I remembered from long ago, also, that there was a beautiful stretch or roadway set right up against a cliff, and which offered some truly magnificent views. With the autumn colors, it figured to be particularly incredible, and there are pictures below to prove that this was the case.

After that, we headed back through Port Jervis and again into New Jersey to visit High Point State Park, which is a place that I have been meaning to take him for a long time now. The obelisk was open, and so we went all the way to the top, which was exhausting. It was only the second time in my life that I had done so, and obviously the first time for him.

Following our visit to High Point State Park, I wanted to take him to Middletown, to visit SUNY Orange, or Orange County Community College. Specifically, I wanted him to see the bones of "Sugar", the mastadon. My grandfather used to work as an assistant professor in Biology at the Bio-Tec Building on campus, and the bones of the mastadon used to be a source of endless fascination to my brother and I. In fact, I remember running straight from the entrance to the assembled bones on more than one occasion. Now, all of those years later, I was finally sharing this experience with him.

By that point, it was starting to get a bit late. But I wanted to stop at one more place, the old stamp store of Middletown that my grandfather used to shop at and, on occasion, took me along with him on some of these trips, just to see if it was still open after all of these years. It is called Dart Stamp and Coin and, sure enough, it is still open, although we arrived maybe forty minutes after they had closed up shop for the day.

He was hungry, and we had not eaten lunch yet. So I asked him what he wanted, and rather predictably, he told me that he wanted Taco Bell. We happened on one, and got tacos to go, and then ate them at the parking lot of the old Red Apple Rest. Our day was complete, but it felt like one of those good days, with quality times that make for quality memories, and I felt truly blessed to have shared this with him.

Camping