I was going to New Mexico for roughly two weeks - from August second to the nineteenth, for a backpacking trip in the craggy mountains of the Philmont Boy Scout Ranch in Cimarron.
This was going to be my first real backpacking trip, and just a glance at the packing list told me that I was woefully unprepared.
I had never backpacked before, and although I understood the concept, it had not yet dawned on me how much stuff I had to carry, nor how heavy it would be.But as I looked over the Philmont website, and spoke to people who had been there, it occurred to me that I was going to have to carry everything that was required for daily life on the trail - about forty or fifty pounds worth of gear.
Our first day of driving would take us through some of the most featureless and flattest states in the Union: Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Iowa, and Nebraska. We had a campsite reserved at the Platte River State Park in Nebraska. There were nine of us on this trip - Myself (Frank), my mom, my sister Veronica, my brother Spenser, Mr. G, his son Kyle, Deirdre, Michela and her brother Dan.
It was at little past seven o'clock in the morning. We were on our way.
The Iowa capital was all columns and elegantly carved statuary,
all topped with a huge dome clad in bright gold.
In the midday sunlight, the dome was a beacon of light and could not be directly looked at.
We had reserved camp sites two and three at Platte River State Park, and I quickly found them.
There didn't seem to be enough space for a tent and, upon entering, was startled to find a fifteen-foot teepee erected in the middle of the site. I approached it and cautiously shone my flashlight inside.
It had obviously been built to be semi-permanent, as the support poles had been bolted to a sturdy wooden floor which, aside from a few leaves, was empty. Site three had an identical teepee, and I jogged down the path, flashlight beam dancing ahead, verifying that every site had a teepee.
I grinned. This was too good to be true. It isn't every day that a Michigan boy gets to sleep in a true
Nebraska teepee. I ran back to the van to relay the news.