We go camping over the Fourth of July, ostensibly for our dogs who have been prone to become drooling, shivering messes if we stay in town and attempt to survive the "celebrations" of our fellow citizens that turn our normally quiet, tree-lined neighborhood into a booming, smoke-filled, fiery war zone.

Our favorite getaway spot is a small, primitive campground midway up Mt. Adams in the Gifford Pinchot National Forest. Called Paradise Creek, it's nestled in the deep old growth forest north of Carson, Washington, at the intersection of its namesake Paradise Creek and the Wind River. With no electrical hookups and rusty-but-potable water pumped from a creaky old-fashioned cast iron hand well pitcher pump, it (mostly) discourages the big rigs and generator-dependant types from rumbling through the tents and small trailers dotting the two loops. 

We realized on this trip that we've been camping there almost every year for the past 20 years with our tent and queen-sized air mattress—a step up from the backpacking tent with two zip-together down bags on insulated pads employed by our younger selves. We've gone through only two Coleman camp stoves if you don't count the white gas Coleman borrowed from my parents that had already survived 30 years of Bauer family campouts, and tents ranging from that first two-person LL Bean backpacking tent Dave had bought used from a college friend, to a Columbia Sportswear Bugaboo that Dave (at 6'4") could stand up in to our current "two-room" giant from REI that we've dubbed the Circus Tent.

We try to snag a non-reservable, first-come, first-serve site a couple of days before the holiday, preferably along the creek, and this year we lucked into a double site* set back from the road, enabling us to listen to the creek burbling along about 50 feet down a thin thread of trail opening onto a shady private "beach," perfectly suited to a couple of camp chairs and an afternoon spent reading.

Dave wanted to finish a couple of books he'd been trying to get through for awhile, and I'd brought along the relatively recent and well-reviewed "James," a retelling of Twain's Huck Finn from the perspective of the slave Jim, by Percival Everett, which Dave had read and gave the thumbs-up to. My first choice, however, was "Angle of Repose" by Wallace Stegner, a book I'd read ages ago and remembered liking despite its intimidating 600 pages. It got me on a Stegner kick back then, so I thought I'd give it a reread.

It turned out to be a perfect vacation book, at least for me, a story (and a writer's voice) you get immersed in without much effort, though it's not what I'd call a light summer read. Told from the perspective of a 1970s-era retired history professor, Lyman Ward, Stegner's incredible prose and well-crafted story follows Ward's attempt to understand and document his grandmother's story of moving from a privileged East Coast society to move out West to follow her husband's itinerant career as a mining engineer.

Like many writers whose work I admire, I found myself stunned by Stegner's ability to bring people alive on the page and gobsmacked at his descriptions of places and atmosphere. For example, his description of the relationship between a writer and his characters, real or imagined, as expressed through Lyman's struggle to see and experience Susan Ward's life from her perspective:

“There is another physical law that teases me, too: the Doppler Effect. The sound of anything coming at you- a train, say, or the future- has a higher pitch than the sound of the same thing going away. If you have perfect pitch and a head for mathematics you can compute the speed of the object by the interval between its arriving and departing sounds. I have neither perfect pitch nor a head for mathematics, and anyway who wants to compute the speed of history? Like all falling bodies, it constantly accelerates. But I would like to hear your life as you heard it, coming at you, instead of hearing it as I do, a somber sound of expectations reduced, desires blunted, hopes deferred or abandoned, chances lost, defeats accepted, griefs borne.”

It's no wonder it won the Pulitzer, and got me started on a Stegner jag.

Read other Camp Stories (with more here) from our years of tent camping in the Pacific Northwest, as well as our best hacks to make it easy and fun.

* Double sites, if you're not aware, are generally intended for two or more tents and, at $45 per night, cost more than single sites. (We also can't use our National Parks Senior Pass for double sites, which halves the cost per night of a regular site.) But honestly, considering what a room rate or rental house would run, it's more than worth it. 

It was a frantic beginning to a trip that was supposed to be all about chilling out. First, a record-breaking heat wave upended the balmy summer weather typical of Western Oregon in late June, which followed on an exceptionally dry spring. Indoor temperatures, even with fans blowing and our window air conditioner blasting on high, were hovering in the high 80s.

The generous offer of a beach retreat from a friend was one we couldn't refuse, so we threw the dogs and the ice chest in the car and took off for two nights, returning mid-week. On returning home we quickly emptied the car, started a load of laundry, threw the tent in the car and dashed to our targeted campground, hoping to find a site where we could spend the Fourth of July weekend, a yearly pilgrimage considering our noise-averse pups.

Paradise Creek, a rustic campground in the Gifford-Pinchot National Forest where we've camped in years past, has around 40 sites, 60 percent of which are reservable with 40 percent available on a first-come, first-serve basis. Some of the best sites along the creek (particularly numbers 27 and 29) are non-reservable, so we hoped that by arriving mid-week we might just snag one of those.

As we turned into the campground, I said a silent prayer that the camping goddess would favor us with a good campsite. We noted that there were indeed a few available near the entrance (bordering the road) that might be okay in a pinch. As we rounded the turn to the creekside spots, I held my breath.

We ticked them off as we crept past. Nope. Nope. An inside site, across the road from the creek, was open, but we rolled on knowing we could come back around if we had to. Site 27, a large double, was taken—crap!—and there was just one more site on the creek side, number 29, beyond it.

Astonishingly, it was open! We parked the car at the site and I practically ran to the registration stand to fill out the slip and deposit our check while Dave started setting up the tent. The plan was to leave the tent set up on the site overnight—allowed if you return within 24 hours—then dash home to pack up our gear and come back the following day. [NOTE: This practice is no longer allowed. You must occupy your site the first night.]

The next evening found us settled in, with drinks in hand and pasta bubbling on the campstove, ready to be smothered in a Bolognese I'd brought from home. The following days were blessedly quiet—this campground is normally punctuated by birdsong rather than generators—full of walks, reading by the creek, naps and relearning how to relax. After our COVID year, it was more than welcome.

Read more Camp Stories about our favorite places here and here, and get my list of must-have gear and hacks collected over our decades of camping!