Camping and heat advisories: they don't mix

We sure picked a lousy weekend to go camping. All the pertinent weather stats pointed to stay at home in your central air conditioning and veg out with a good book or movie. We decided to go for it; and I, unfortunately, paid the price. The case of heat exhaustion was not too serious, but enough that I felt fairly crappy over the last few days.

Although we are not very experienced campers, my wife and I learned a very valuable lesson on camping very early in our relationship---why travel seven hours to a state campground when you can go ten minutes from home and enjoy all the same benefits at a county campground? Yes, we had actually driven about 7 hours to this state park; then, sat in our tent as it rained for 2 straight days. We eventually just threw everything into the back of our Bronco and drove home. The vow has held; now we just go ten minutes to Baker Park Reserve and camp out. The trees are just as green and lush, the facilities are first class, the lake is just as beautiful as any other, and the camp fire is just as mesmerizing as if we were hours away.

So far we’ve only camped out 1 or 2 days at a time. Our real test will be coming up at the end of August. We plan to visit Custer State Park in South Dakota and camp out for 5 days. We’ll see how hardy our family is then.