I was on the ferry to Isle Royale National Park, sitting on a long, wooden bench, watching everyone else.

There were singles, couples, groups, and families. Watching a few kids slink along beside their parents, moms and dads making sure they had everything in the right place and everyone was coming along at the proper pace, I remembered the camping trips I used to take with my mom and dad.

None of us had cell phones, much less smartphones. When we were on the trip, we were on the trip and nowhere else. We were all there — wherever we were — together.

We were tent campers. We weren’t as hardcore as the people who do the deep backcountry stuff. You know, the trips where they hike in seven miles and set up their tent in the middle of the dense wilderness. But we were rustic enough for my parents to look down at RVs and any kind of electricity.

Scamps like us

Since then, they have moderated their stance. In their old age, they have acquired a small Scamp trailer — the smallest one you can buy, they assure us — and are constantly apologizing for its very existence, maintaining that they “put in their time.” We tell them that it’s OK, they are almost 70 years old after all. They can stop roughing it.

One summer when I was in middle school, we took a trip out to Maine. We camped the whole way from West Michigan to Acadia National Park. I was watching some old family videos the other day and saw some clips from that trip. We were packing up in the rain in New Hampshire. That’s rough. That video brought back all sorts of other memories from that trip. I remember my brother and I were so into skateboarding and almost killed ourselves every other day.

Dog days

When I was in 9th grade, we took a trip to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. We went over to the Apostle Islands off the coast of Wisconsin, too. We brought our dog along. Once, way up north, she jumped out of the car and right into a ditch. We thought her leg was hurt.

My parents were annoyed at the prospect of wasting a day (and money) trying to find a vet way up there. Then, all of a sudden, she miraculously started walking fine again. For the rest of her life (she lived to the ripe old age of 19), we always joked about how she was “faking it” on the U.P. trip.

I was getting really into music around that time and brought my trumpet because I swore I couldn’t take any days off. I would practice with a whisper mute around the campsite and sometimes in the car without a mute. If my parents were ever annoyed, they didn’t show it. They were always supportive, even when we didn’t have any room to spare in the blue Dodge Caravan and I was incessantly running the same passages over and over in the back seat.

In-tents experiences

After my sophomore year of college, we took a big trip, the biggest we ever took. We camped all the way out to California and back. We went to Yosemite, Zion, Grand Canyon, Rocky Mountain National Park, and a bunch of other places along the way. I saw a video from that trip the other day, too. We were on the beach south of San Francisco. My dad was filming. My mom and sister were talking with one another near the water, and my brother and I were goofing off down the beach, acting like a couple of idiots.

My parents took us camping because it was cheap. They loved it, of course, they did it before we were born, but I know that a big reason for camping our way across the country in a tent was the affordability.

We almost never stopped for fast food. If we did, it was a crazy treat. Instead, we made sandwiches using soggy cold cuts drawn from the bottom of the blue-and-white cooler in the trunk. It was always half ice, half water in there. We would sit outside a rest stop with our sandwiches, a big bag of half-crushed Lay’s potato chips, and plastic cups filled with water from the drinking fountain near the bathrooms inside.

Some trips, my brother and I shared a small tent while my mom, dad, and sister slept in a bigger one on the other side of the campsite. Other trips, we all shared one big tent together, all five of us. I remember laying there at night, joking with each other, the cold dampness of the sleeping bag on my arms, my mom and dad on one side of the tent, us kids on the other.

IRL or bust

None of us had cell phones, much less smartphones. When we were on the trip, we were on the trip and nowhere else. We were all there — wherever we were — together. Crammed in the car, asleep in the tent, packing up the site in the rain, hotter than hell in Zion National Park in July, sitting around the fire in the morning, freezing after emerging from our sleeping bags in Rocky Mountain National Park.

Some of my most potent childhood memories are from those camping trips. They weren’t fancy or luxurious, we never went to Disney World or any big resorts, and I know I, in my foolish youth, sometimes wondered why my parents were so old-fashioned taking us camping in tents. But they really were special. I know it now, though I didn’t realize it for a long time.

It’s only as a dad that I now understand how much work those trips were and how much they mattered. Taking us three wild kids camping across the country in a tent, seeing all those incredible places. Spending all those days and nights together, just our family, camping. Our parents must have really loved us.