Camp Wallnut Hills

Over the weekend, well over the weekend I almost could not get out of the house. It took me a while but I finally made it up camping before the University of Michigan game was on. After a little work on getting the DirecTV set up we were in business for the game.

I started in on making a dish (Greek salad) to pass and only caught portions of the game. I was hearing lots of complaints from the people watching it and an occasional YES, YES and more. In the end it was disappointing and Michigan lost but they managed to make it respectable by only losing by 2 points. Oh boy, it is going to be a long year. One person who is very passionate about football vowed he was changing teams. For heaven sakes it was only 1 game and this is a rebuilding year…

This was the weirdest year camping and I have been doing this Labor Day camping thing for 19 years now, 18 of those years at our present spot, Walnut Hills in Durand Michigan. When I showed up I wondered where everyone was. It turns out the largest group, probably about 14 people, were not coming because the truck they haul the large trailer with was broken. If the Mom and Dad were not showing than none of the Lick clan was showing. There were a couple others that pulled out too. All in all we had only 15 people camping this year. Now don't get me wrong, we still had fun. Somehow it was not the same. Normally we have about 30 to 50 people show for the weekend.

We did not do games. We figured we would hold out on that until next year when more people were present. We did have some Euchre playing going on, lots of socializing even with the person charged with keeping order. Never hurts to be in good with him. We watched some football. We had a mini Toga party complete with costumes by most (pictures to follow once I can get them off the camera although I did not don a Toga). We also had Greek dinning on Saturday late afternoon but it did not go so well. Almost everyone made some form of salad. Every salad was different however and you know, I do love a good salad.

There was a dance for the kids, karaoke, bingo (I one big … a whole $3.00), wagon rides, teen girls talking to boys on the cell phone (my niece took part in that… yikes), a little drinking… all and all it was a very nice weekend. It just was very different than a typical weekend up there.

We did our future planning. Next years theme is tailgate. We will come dressed up as a fan for our favorite team. I may need to go with half a face painted Green for Michigan State University and half my face painted blue for University of Michigan. We will have food all based on what you might typically have at a tailgate. That will be our dinner for Saturday. We will also have typical tailgate games. Games like cornhole, washer toss, ladders and I am sure there will be more. There should also be a football being tossed around and I do believe a flag football game will be played. Yep, it is going to be a fun time for sure.

The following year is going to be funny. We do not have the details ironed out yet but the following year will be out 20th year at the same campground. At this point we are talking about making this a black tie affair. I did a little shopping around and I guess I can get my hand on a tuxedo for a not terrible price unless I want to go with the $99 bargain basement jobber. I best work on losing some weight if I am going to plan that. Some how I think it would be funny to put together this thing and possibly fun but I must say I do not know about dressing up formal at a campground.

We had an awesome weekend. The sun was hot, the days pretty warm, the nights kind of cool, no rain in sight. All together everyone had a great time and, even though we have known each other for years and years, we got to know each other even better.

I am already looking forward to next year.

I hope you had a nice holiday weekend as well.