Labor Day weekend 2008 has officially arrived, at least for me. I am busily getting ready to head out camping on the weekend that many call the last official camping weekend of the year.
It is the last long weekend before kids head back to school, although some kids already went back a week ago. My nieces and nephews will be on this trip and I am sure they will be whooping it up one last time before they go back to school on Tuesday.
It is not my last camping trip of the year though. For me, camping season is just gearing up because Labor Day weekend signals fall to me and fall is my absolute favorite time of year to go camping.
How come?
First of all, the cooler weather slows down the bugs and the first hard frost eliminates them. Since I’m very allergic to insects, I love fall camping since the bugs are pretty much gone.
Plus I love the cooler nights. It makes sitting around the campfire more fun. Yes, I like campfires in the summer but they just aren’t as enjoyable when it’s still 80 degrees at 9 pm.
And to me there’s nothing like the smell of the air in the Fall. I’m not sure exactly what it is but the air just smells crisp and fresh to me in the fall. 
Also, I can’t forget to mention the colors of Fall. The beautiful hues of red, yellow and orange on the trees (and on the ground when the trees shed their leaves) is about the most beautiful thing in the world to me. I love it!
Yes, the downside is that Fall is the signal that winter isn’t far behind but I’m pretty good at keeping that out of my mind (you can extol the virtues of Spring all you want but to me it just means mud, having to start mowing the lawn, and the return of bugs)
In addition to my camping trip this weekend, 3 days at High Cliff State Park in Wisconsin, I’ll be going on a 10 day camping trip at the end of September/beginning of October (the longest camping trip I’ll have ever taken) and on another one the third weekend of October, right before most state parks here in Wisconsin shut down their shower buildings, flush toilets and part or all of their campgrounds for the winter.
But, getting back to this weekend, I’ll be sure to take some pictures of my sister-in-law’s new additions to her flamingo collection to share with you next week – the one she never wanted to start. She hates flamingos so when she got married a few years ago friends of hers put a whole family of flamingos in her front yard, including bride and groom flamingos. Now, all our family members collect flamingo items when we see them and give them to her. She won’t put them in her house or her yard, but she will display them when we go camping. My donation to her collection this year is pink plastic flamingo toothpicks (yes, kind of pathetic but they were the only thing I was able to find). She’ll like them though. They’ll work great to spear the pickle she likes in her Bloody Mary’s.
I’ll also take pictures of our big meal on Sunday. The members of our family who don’t camp always come up to visit one day during our Labor Day trip and this year they’re coming on Sunday. We’re going to make them pizzas over the fire, garlic toast over the fire, dutch oven lasagna, and dutch oven apple cobbler.
It’s a lot of food but there will be about 30 people there to chow it down too.
Are you going camping this weekend?
