Camping memories

Eleven years ago this month, my father, Art Bender, passed away after having complications related to surgery earlier that week. Not a day has gone by since that I haven’t thought of him.

When I was perhaps 7 or 8, my parents bought a tent and started camping, and being just a kid at the time, I had no choice but to go with them. Their tent camping evolved into using a pop-up camper, and later to self-contained camping trailers.

Those early years of tent camping were some of the best, and it never failed that Dad would come up with some different way of handling the equipment he packed along: Coleman stove, Coleman lantern, Gott cooler.

Art Bender camping at Washington State Park in 1979.

Submitted photo

At one time, Dad made a plywood box to store the stove and pans they used for cooking during their weekend getaways (see photo: Washington State Park, 1979). The family still has the stove and old plywood box.

Later on, when Art and Cecelia began using trailers for camping, Dad bought a string of plastic awning lights that were designed to look like little camping trailers. They were the neatest lights, and I wish we still had them.

Over the years, they camped in Kentucky, Georgia, Colorado and most state parks in Missouri: Montauk, Sam A. Baker, Babler, Trail of Tears, etc.

Missouri has a wonderful state park system, and I enjoy visiting the parks when I can. In fact, I’m helping organize a ruck (hike) on Katy Trail State Park at Weldon Spring, Missouri, for September 15. Along with a couple of Facebook groups, we’re hoping to raise money for PTSD service dogs, to help in the fight against veteran suicides.

Mom and Dad were able to continue camping with a self-contained trailer up to the fall of 2006. With the exception of a few years, they probably had done some amount of camping for 30 years.

Time passes by and people pass away, but when good memories were made, those are what keep past events from being forgotten.