Get A Little Out There
By Trina Machacek
JUNE!!! Time for vacation-a-plenty. Most families take one giant leap into vacation once a year, in the summertime. Oh there are the skiers and snowboarders who live close to the snow and fall down mountain sides on weekends. Some families take winter vacations to have fun in the snow. Or go to grandma’s house over the river and through the woods. But. Yes, a vacationing sunburnt “but.” The summer vacations, I would bet a nickel, far outnumber those snow vacations. Which they should. Summers are made for vacations. Vacations are absolutely the best memory making times for families.
Trina Machacek
Families can be anywhere from a cute and cuddly couple up to a whole passel of kids and dogs, (and some families even take their pet bunnies). Throwing everyone into the family vehicle to go forth to vacation. It seems the best vacation stories come from the camping experience. That could be because after living closely with your family for 50 weeks of the year, those 2-week vacations are somewhat of a reprieve and mostly enjoyed in the great out of doors. Where there is room to run, jump and play. Get dirty. Eat everything in sight. Most importantly to have room to enjoy the freedom from the walls that keep a family together—I mean maybe a bit too much togetherness. Everyone needs some elbow room occasionally. That is what vacations could have been invented for.
Over the years of my life journey, I have been given the gift of hearing some of the greatest vacation stories. One family took to the forest in June sometime in the 1970’s. Tent camping with kids and a huge family. I suppose it could have been like a family reunion. With my family this would never have worked. We always had one person in our family that seemed to have lived to “stir the pot” until it bubbled over and muddied the water. That is for another story. A very long, muddy story.
This one family though were camping in a lovely spot in a U S Forest Service campground. Tent hidden in a circle of tall trees that smelled of fresh pine. Near a lake, but not next to the lake. Those spots were filled by the time the family got up to the campground very late on a Friday night. After the dad got off work and the family got EVERYTHING packed into their station wagon and headed out. Stars were starting to poke out and shine in the sky as the KFC chicken dinner was devoured and the campfire was dying into the perfect state to roast the first marshmallows of the ten-day camping adventure.
The three kids were in pj’s, the dad asleep in a camp chair and the mom was warming her backside to the fire when the first bug dived down from a tree and hit her in the chest with a thump. This was not a little bug. This was a big, flying, beetle bug known as a June Bug. Full grown they get to be about one and a half inches long and green and solid. And they fly like a drunken sailor on shore leave. Even though June bugs are in the ground during the day, they spend the nights in trees and are very attracted to light. Like the light of a campfire.
That was precisely when the attack of the June Bugs started. Soon that one bug became a swarm. A June night, June Bug flock diving at the fire. Hitting like marbles against the calm peaceful camping children sticky with roasted marshmallow fingers.
As the story goes it was mayhem trying to get everyone inside the tent and away from the harmless but at the time, attacking bugs. This story apparently had grown over the years so much that by the time it got to me the laughing was fast coming and long lived. That family still today loves to recall the evening. Once inside the tent with the lantern glowing, the bugs were hitting the tent banging at them from all sides. Traumatizing at the time, over the years turned into one of the best memory making times they all could remember. Now that’s a summer vacation!
In reality, I will admit this was my family and yes, it’s still talked about and laughed about. I can tell you though I can still hear those HUGE bugs hitting the green canvas of our little house in the woods.
So as the Travel Nevada and the Nevada Department of Tourism and Cultural Affairs is saying this year, “Get a Little Out There” this summer and make those memories that will last a lifetime.
Happy JUNE, June Bugs and all!
Trina lives in Diamond Valley, north of Eureka, Nevada. She loves to hear from readers, email her at itybytrina@yahoo.com
