July 22, 2006...We were less than two weeks removed from our annual campout/family reunion in the Big Horn Mountains located in north eastern Wyoming. During that trip, August, my six year old son, missed his best friend (and our neighbor) Elijah, who is nine years old. August had talked about Elijah constantly while we were away, so I told August that perhaps Elijah could come with us on our next Wyoming campout (scheduled for Summer, 2008).

Needless to say, my son told Elijah of our future plans and he was very excited about the prospect of camping with us. I thought the idea of camping with my son and his best friend would be fun, so I asked them if they would like to go camping that upcoming Saturday as a "test-run". They were giddy with excitement and we talked about building a fire, roasting marshmallows and telling ghost stories. My three year old daughter, India, caught wind of our upcoming trip and asked if she could go too. To which I replied "of course," knowing full well that my wife would have no interest in camping with us, and that I would therefore, be on my own with the three kids. I was up for the challenge (or so I thought).

I decided that we would go camping in O'Neill Regional Park located in Trabuco Canyon, California (South Orange County). On Friday (the day before we were to go camping) things really started to heat up (literally). The entire State of California was in the midst of a heat wave, the hottest day of which, was forecasted to be Saturday (our "special" day). I woke up Saturday morning, felt the heat, and considered calling the whole thing off. Then my son came down the stairs excited and asking me when we were going to leave for camping. Elijah showed up at 8:30 a.m. toting a backpack that was stuffed with his pajamas for that evening and a change of clothes for the following day.

I've been to O'Neill Regional Park several times before, and it has never been crowded, which is why I chose O'Neill Regional Park for our campout (plus the fact that it is only a fifteen minute drive from our house, which means I could run home and get anything that I may have forgotten when packing the car). I figured we would have no problem getting a campsite, so I didn't bother making reservations. Needless to say, when we pulled up to the park gate at 11:30 a.m., it was 105 degrees and the campground was almost full. With the kids enjoying the car's air-conditioning, I walked up to the park reservation gate (already sweating profusely at this point) and asked if they had any camping spots left...preferably in the shade. I was told that there were only 11 spots left and none of them had any shade. We chose our spot (Space #78).

After pulling the camping chairs out of the Suburban and getting the kids set up under a shade tree (which is an oxymoron when its 105 degrees outside), I proceeded to drag our 150 pound behemoth of a tent out of the back of the vehicle and spent the next two hours pitching our tent and setting up camp on what felt like the Sun. It was so hot, that the black metal poles used to hold up the tent were burning my hands. I literally had to juggle/bounce the poles in my hands while trying to insert them into the pole connectors that create the frame of the tent. By the time the tent was up, and the beds were inflated, it was 109 degrees outside and I had probably lost three pounds of water weight in sweat (most of which sweat was now all over the newly made beds and on the floor of the tent). I dragged myself over to the tree under which the kids sat and drank two bottles of water. I then made the best decision of the day. I would take the kids back down the hill to Elijah's house so that they could go swimming in Elijah's pool until the temperatures dropped to something more manageable.

As we swam and enjoyed the cooler water of the pool, I could see thunderhead clouds forming over the foothills where our campsite was located. Gradually as the day went on, those thunderheads grew in size and got darker in color. I started to worry, because I didn't put the rain slick on top of the tent (after all, it was 109 degrees when we left the campsite). I told the kids that it was time to head back up the hill, because we needed to put the rain slick on the tent before our beds got wet from the impending rain. My daughter was having none of it. Between swimming and relaxing in the air-conditioned house, she decided she was "staying home with mommy" and she was "not going camping anymore" (she's clearly the smartest one of our group). Even her "pink blanky" in the tent on the hill was not enough to change her mind (and believe me, that's saying a lot, as she never goes to sleep unless she has that blanket).

The boys and I arrived back at the campsite at 6:00 p.m. (it was still 103 degrees) to find that I had pitched the tent on top of a red ant hill (and that the back half of the tent was now covered in red ants). We eventually, and artfully, got the rain slick over the top of the tent and secured to the tent stakes, despite the ants. My son had a the great idea of hiking "Holy Jim's Trail" to cool off in the waterfall located at the end of the trail. The trail is about five miles down a dirt road from the campsite and is only two miles long. However, by the time we drove to the trail and actually began to hike, the sky above us was filled with clouds and lighting could be seen near the hilltops all around us. The thunder was cracking loud in our ears and it started to rain the very large rain drops that you often get during summer monsoons in the desert. All the way up the trail the boys were asking me if there were mountain lions in the hills that we were hiking in. I replied truthfully, "yes." The boys then asked if there were bats in the hills that we were hiking in. Again, I replied honestly, "yes". This exchange prompted a series of rapid questions about whether mountain lions can kill you, whether bats bite AND suck your blood, and so on. We didn't make it more than a half-mile up the trail before both boys wanted to turn around and go back to the car.

On the way back down the trail Elijah asked me "what does it mean when your throat feels dry?" I replied, "it means you're thirsty, you should drink some water." He did. A few minutes later he told me that his throat still felt dry, so I told him to drink more water. He did. A few minutes later he asked me if you can die from having a dry throat, to which I replied, "not as long as you continue to drink water." Another minute passed before he turned, looked at me, started crying and confessed "I think I am going to die because of the dry "thing" in my throat." I was busy trying to calm him down when I almost stepped on a rattlesnake sprawled across the trail right at the beginning of the trailhead. Lucky for me, the snake saw me before I saw it, and rattled its tail as a warning. I was startled, but excited. I shouted "RATTLESNAKE!" To which Elijah lost his mind. He started shaking and screaming hysterically at the top of his lungs. My son was behind Elijah, and I could tell by the look on his face, he was not quite sure what was going on. That is until he looked at Elijah's face and saw the terror in his eyes. This triggered a reaction in August that made him also scream and cry. From their reaction, you would have thought both boys had been bitten by the snake. They were so terrified that they just stood there screaming, paralyzed with fear. The snake, on the other hand, was busy trying to get away from us. I found it coiled between a boulder and the side of the hill rattling its tail at me. I tried to get the boys to come over and appreciate it from a safe distance, but they were DONE. We headed back to camp.

On the way into the campground, I saw a young boy (he appeared to be between 9-12) run up to the short fence separating the loop road from a camping area. He looked me right in the eye and heaved a rock at my vehicle. It struck with a loud thud. I slammed on the breaks and put the car in reverse. I went looking for the boy on foot (while August and Elijah stayed in the car). It turns out the hoodlum was part of a group of 30-40 family and friends that were camping there for the night. When I described the boy to the group, one of the parents quickly replied, "It sounds like Franco." Sure enough, when they took a head count of their group, everyone was present, except for my buddy Franco. I was pissed, but there's not a lot I could do. It was dark at that point and I couldn't tell if my vehicle suffered any real damage. DAMN YOU FRANCO!

By the time we made it back to the tent, the boys were hearing rattlesnakes around every corner. Elijah was dead set on getting into the tent and going to bed. I followed Elijah into the tent to help get him situated for the night when I realized that my air mattress had gone flat while we were out. DAMN YOU FRANCO! I pumped up the bed while August held the flashlight for me, and we eventually found the small leak. I patched the hole with duct tape and finished inflating the mattress. I asked August if he wanted to come out and help me light the fire and roast marshmallows. He was all for it, but first we had to empty the water out of the chairs (as it also had rained back at our campsite while we were hiking). I grabbed my chair to turn it over when I was stung by a bee in the finger. DAMN YOU FRANCO! I jumped and waved my hand vigorously shouting "ouch, ouch, ouch". This freaked August out and he started screaming "What's wrong?, What's Wrong?" It was dark, so I didn't know at first that it was a bee that stung me, I just knew that it hurt. I had August shine his flashlight on my finger and then on the chair. That's when we saw the bee and August decided that he didn't want to build a fire and roast marshmallows after all. He wanted to go hang out with Elijah in the tent (August is terrified of bees).

I came to camp, which for me includes an obligatory campfire at the end of the day. The boys had both of the flashlights in the tent (and they weren't giving them up), so I decided to plow forward and build my fire in the dark. Once the fire was popping and the boys were in bed, I cracked open a beer and began to relax. It was then that I noticed there was a sharp pebble stuck between the ball of my foot and my open-toed sandal. It had been there for a while, but it was not until I started to decompress that I noticed it. I spent the next hour and a half periodically flexing my foot and banging my heel against rocks, the ground, the picnic bench (and any other stationary object that was within striking distance from my chair and the cooler) in an effort to dislodge the pebble from my sandal. Turns out, in the daylight of the next morning, that the small pebble was actually a very large steel thumbtack with a one inch spike that pierced through the bottom of my sandal. DAMN YOU FRANCO!

Eventually the campfire burned out, which signaled the end of a long day and held the promise of a good night's sleep. However, I was awakened by my son at some point that night (or rather very early the next morning) notifying me that he had to go pee and asking me if I would carry him outside to do it, to which I replied, "I'm not getting out of this tent and neither are you." Instead, I unzipped the door to the tent just wide enough to create a two foot long hole so that he could lean forward and pee out of the tent while still standing inside. A good game plan, but poor execution, as suddenly I heard the unmistakable sound of urine bouncing off the interior wall of the tent and onto the floor. DAMN YOU FRANCO! "Pee out of the tent! Out of the tent!" I barked, which he eventually did.

I woke up the next morning sometime between 5:00 a.m. and 6:00 a.m. on a half-inflated mattress and with a backache. I was tired and the tent smelled like urine. I sent the boys out to play in the bone-dry riverbed behind our camping spot, while I got dressed, put on my sandals and walked outside of the tent to assess the situation. It had rained during the night, so the tent and camping chairs were wet. It was about 75 degrees and the forecast was for triple digit temperatures again. The bottom foot of the tent was covered in mud from the now-wet dirt that I pitched the tent in, and the ants were back (although not quite as many as the day prior). That's when I discovered the thumbtack in my sandal and made an executive decision.

I packed up the clothes, the cooler, the bags, the beds and the chairs and threw them into the back of the Suburban. I then proceeded to tear down the tent and drag it piece by piece (starting with the rain slick, then the poles, then the stakes and finally the tent itself) over to the four thirty-two gallon trash cans at the end of the loop road, where I stuffed the tent into the trash cans (urine, ants and all).

I cursed Franco under my breath on the way out the gate and we were home by 7:15 a.m.