CAMPING $9

Amy is the idea person around here and last summers notion was to sleep in a tent near a beach. The Cole family on their first camping trip! What I imagined was The Berenstein Bears "Too Much Vacation".

A neighbor had suggested the Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore in northwest Michigan. After doing some research Amy decided that Platte River Campground would be our destination. The problem is that if you didn't make reservations 6 months in advance there was a chance that you wouldn't get a camp site. It turned out to be something on the order of an estate tag sale. People arrived in the wee hours of the morning and stood in or on line at the park ranger's office. The ranger arrived around 7 to give the rules of the campground....don't leave out any food or the raccoons will steal it...blah, blah blah....and proceeded to hand out numbers. Number one got their pick of a space and so on. We were advised from an experienced couple that a walk-in site was the thing to do. This would get you away from the trailer campers and RVs.

In the middle of the first night we were awakened by the sound of a baby rattle with an electric amplifier. I grabbed my flashlight and headed toward the picnic table when i spotted a masked bandit nudging our giant tupperware container of trail mix through the woods. He gave me a look like "hey buddy, finders keepers, we're watching "Rascal" tonight for the 3 hundredth time and my wife and kids are waiting for me to bring home some groceries". He turned out to be more scared of me than i of him and scurried off in search of another newbie camper.

We really had the time of our lives up there. The weather was perfect and the water was clear and beautiful. It was Maui in Michigan and it was a bargain!