How many songs about the summertime can you conjure up in your mind? Here’s a few for you. Be careful…they might become ear boogers.
Mungo Jerry https://youtu.be/yG0oBPtyNb0
Sly and the Family Stone https://youtu.be/32inwlWSRpY
Alice Cooper https://youtu.be/XH4JL42iWLI
Neat King Cole https://youtu.be/IOV96BCAvZc
We realize with each new place we go that summer means so many different things. In northeast Florida, people who stay there talked about it with a certain twisted bravado, like other people describe liking lutefisk. High 90s in both temperatures and humidity brings out a peculiar, almost masochistic pride in the locals. Folks in DC said they couldn’t imagine being anyplace else. The camp host at Delaware’s Cape Henlopen said, as the sweat poured off his brow, that he loved the heat. It’s gonna hit 94 degrees today.
Today, we find ourselves in a place where another cultural Mecca of summer is on proud display: the membership park with two pools and a lake – and a small campground (“only 110 sites,” said the proud, friendly and sweat-drenched owner) mercifully shaded by tall trees. To say that there are throngs of kids would understate the moment. They are the reason Lake Kandle Campground and Swim Club exists, the very reason why almost all of the sites, including some small cabins, are rented for the season. A steady stream of mini-vans flows in with loads of kids anxiously waiting for their turn at the rope swing, splash park, or the decisive moment at the order window of the snack bar when they have to choose, french fries, a popsicle, or M&Ms. Growing up in Poughkeepsie, I remember those summer adventures, and now it’s fun to watch and recall.
A friend asked us if, on this trip through the eastern part of the country, we would miss the wilderness of the western states. Yes, but that’s not the point. We chose to map our trip out this way so we would see the country in its entirety. So we seek and explore. Here in the Garden State of New Jersey, we stopped at a family-run roadside produce market, proven by the large photo of a recent wedding with an enormous tribe of New Jersey-ites posing at the head of the church. Peach cider, fresh corn, and tomatoes sold by the boxful, tomatoes so good and that just don’t exist elsewhere. As kids, we used to eat them like apples and devour half a bushel in one sitting.
Coming back to camping after our six week hiatus thrust us into summer. Now that school is out, campgrounds are arenas for teams of amazing bicycle stunts and high volume declarations of whose turn it is on the swings or who made the best s’more. In its own way, it’s fun to see kids groovin’ and parents chillin’. Yet at times it’s the sheer numbers of these summertimers that reminds us we’re on the east coast.
A nice bike ride along a trail down the Delaware coast from our previous campground took us to Rehoboth Beach. I wanted to show Milissa what a classic beach town was like, The people watching there, with beach umbrellas stacked seven layers deep from the (tiny!) Atlantic waves and a boardwalk packed with strollers, teenyboppers, grandparents and sunburns, was one of a kind. If we weren’t passing-through travelers, we would have turned and run. But here was how millions of people have their hot fun in the summertime, so we open our minds and appreciate. We’ll have plenty of time for Walden Pond, now it’s time to enjoy the rollout of summer.
