Tippecanoe River State Park, Summer '91

When I was growing up far-from-rich in Gary, Indiana in the early 90s, I'd always look forward to my birthday, June 16th, not only because it was around the start of fullest summer, my favorite season, but also because that was the only time of the year I'd have money.  I planned how I would spend my birthday money very carefully, often beginning this planning weeks beforehand. I usually received around $50-$60, a princely sum, sure, but still finite.  Waste and frivolousness and lack of preparation were not options. 

This story takes place on a Thursday night in late May, 1991.  I was about to turn 14 and wondering how I was going to spend this year's windfall.  I had pretty much completed my Pink Floyd tape collection, so could branch out into other areas, and was pondering what those areas might be. ZZ Top tapes?  Milli Vanilli?  I was watching the Cubs game on the little 13-inch TV in the kitchen, thinking in the abstract, when a vision came to me which would change the course of my life, and I mean that quite literally: I saw a little tent, set up in our yard, lit by the light of our garage light, a vision so perfect I was nearly stunned by it.  It felt so right. 

This didn't come out of the blue, exactly.  I loved nature and went hiking with my family often, and had been camping twice before (once when I was 5 with my extended family, once in middle school, in a big camper with my friend Eric and his mom and grandparents) and enjoyed the hell out of it both times.  My brother and sister and I also made tents with blankets in the dining room, and slept in there, pretending, on summer nights. 

But the idea of actually owning a real tent, nylon, poles, screens, stakes and all, had theretofore never occurred to me.  Now it had.  There was no going back.  I would buy one and sleep outside the whole summer. 

My birthday came, my money came (my parents, my grandparents, and my Great Aunt Sadie as always came in clutch), and, so, we set off to Sears to find a tent.  (I don't recall considering any store other than Sears...that's where I thought one went to buy stuff like that.  That was probably more true in 1951 than 1991, but I digress.) 

In Sears' tiny, tucked-away sporting goods section at their Southlake Mall location, I picked out a 6' by 6' two-person dome tent, made by the Hillary Tent Company.  It was $32 with tax.  It was blue and yellow.  And I loved it immediately. 

I remember getting it home, laying everything out in the dining room, and setting it up.  Everyone was excited.  I couldn't believe that it was mine.  My brother (Brian) and sister (Joy) and I lay down inside, laughing like loons.  Then, without thinking, I asked my dad if we could go camping at Tippecanoe [River State Park]– and immediately regretted it.  Here was this perfect moment, and I had to go and ruin it.   

See, in my entire life up to that point, apart from the aforementioned camping trip when I was 5 (which was just my dad and I and many members of my extended family), I had been on exactly two trips with my family, and only one (to Wheeling, West Virginia) had been an actual vacation.  (The other was when my dad drove his parents' car out to California for them and brought me along - fun and life changing, sure, but not a vacation.)  We just did not go places (at least overnight) as a family, so asking to go camping was (I thought) asking to be rebuked. 

To my surprise, however, my dad nodded yes, without hesitation.  

Unbeknownst to me, a new epoch in my humble history had begun. 

* 

Tippecanoe was not the closest state park to our house – that would be the much more famous (and some would say superior) Indiana Dunes State Park.  It is not a well-known park, and, aside from hiking, camping, and swatting mosquitoes, there is not much to do. 

So why Tippecanoe?  That was where I had gone camping when I was five, and, semi-recently, my family had gone there, hiking for a day. On one of the hikes, we passed through the campground.  A hot Saturday afternoon in mid September, the campground had a languid, soporific vibe which I found wonderful and my mom found boring.  So, when it popped into my head to ask about going camping, this was the first place that came to mind – one of the least visited parks in Indiana.  But to us, it was familiar, home. 

In preparation, I checked out every book on camping the library had.  Some were fantastically dated, but I read them anyway.  Having spent all of my birthday money on a tent and a Bulls championship shirt, I set about checking off items for the trip with what we had in the house.  I read in one book about homemade sleeping bags (take blankets and attach them together using safety pins) and constructed these, inexpertly as is my wont.  That did not go well. 

In our attic, we had this big, awful mattress that smelled musty and weighed a ton and took up the entire trunk of our 1974 Dodge Dart Swinger, but it fit the confines of the tent perfectly, so it was a go.  We would bring our pillows, our potentially-lethal "sleeping bags", a few Halloween glowsticks we got free out of a box of Captain Crunch, and a "fashlight" as my dad called it. And, as far as sleeping went, we were set. 

At Stack and Van Til, we bought a Styrofoam cooler and ice, Corn King hotdogs (89 cents for a pack of 8, main ingredient no doubt anus), bologna, and cans of Coke (an unheard of luxury at the time).  Lunch would be white bread bologna sandwiches with Pringles, dinner the aforementioned anus dogs with buns and chips, breakfast the next morning Dolly Madison assorted donuts and hot cocoa. We also had marshmallows for dessert.  I think the total bill, including the cooler, came to less than $20. 

* 

Though Tippecanoe was only 67 miles from our house, we all arose at 4:30 in the morning, June 19, 1991, and groggily readied ourselves to leave.  Why, I have no damn idea.  We just did things that way then. 

Yawning, we made our way to the car under dawn-lonely pastels, setting off on a one-night, mid-week trip, one that still stands, in my career as a certified outdoorsman and world traveler, as one of the most important trips I have ever taken.   And one of my most cherished. 

* 

The Dodge did not have a radio, so we brought a beat-up old boombox and laid it in the front seat.  Lots of ZZ Top and Led Zeppelin.  We took Interstate 65 south to Highway 231 east, to 8 east, to 39 south, to 10 east, to 35 south.  Rural, summery, lovely driving.  (I still take that route now when I head down there.) 

We arrived before 8 in the morning, paid for a night ($9 for an electric A site and my dad cussed about the price) and made our way to the campground.  It was almost entirely empty, it being midweek, and we chose a site (number 15) that was wooded and far away from anyone.   

"What about this one?" Dad said.  I told him it looked perfect. 

We pitched our tent, unleased the mattress from the trunk, laid out our bedding (trying to avoid the myriad safety pins, some of which had popped open) and then immediately set out for a hike. 

My dad drove us to the River Shelter, which I remembered.  There is a brief bridge over a small creek there; my grandma told me, at twilight, that there was a troll living under it, and that we had to cross before it got dark or he would get us.  I was five.  I may have shat myself. Memories like that tend to linger. 

We slathered ourselves with Deep Woods Off and then set out on a ten-mile hike, in the early summer heat, without any water or any food.  (I hadn't checked out any books on hiking, apparently).  Trail 4 led us by a stagnant oxbow lagoon that had been part of the Tippecanoe River a few thousand years earlier but was now a breeding hub for mosquitoes and swamp rattlesnakes.  Then on to the muddy river herself.  She was wide but sluggish, moving onward to the Wabash. 

I remember, crossing another little wooden bridge over a tiny tributary of the river, thinking: we are here for the whole day and night!  We don't have to go home until tomorrow!  These thoughts were so wonderful and exhilarating as to be nearly overwhelming.  I thought of our tent, waiting for us to return, and almost couldn't stand it, it was so magnificent. 

The trail wound though pines and eastern deciduous trees, past an abandoned railroad bed (onto Trail 5 now) and was beautiful.  But it was hot, damn hot.  Huge cumulonimbus clouds filled the sky like giant airships but provided little shade.  We hiked past an empty canoe campground and rested by the river. We discussed heading back, but it was still, amazingly, mid morning.  So, we carried on, hiking until we reached an empty scout camp.  After exploring the cabins and kitchen, imagining what it would be like to stay there, we headed back, staggering the exact way we had just come.  It seemed to take forever. 

When we arrived back at camp, we attacked the Cokes (never has a Coke tasted so cold and so good) and then began more leisurely on the bologna and spongy bread and Pringles.  Sated and tired, my brother and then I went in the tent to rest and play Connect Four and marvel at how neat it was inside.  We attempted naps.  The day was hot and partly sunny and very still, so the naps were only marginally successful. 

When I "awoke", I was surprised (and a little chagrinned) to learn that a family from Minnesota had set up on site 13, right next to us.  Why?  The campground was 80% empty.  I listened through the nylon as the dad, who my dad called Flanders after the nerdy Simpsons character, repeatedly told his children, without ever varying the pitch or intonation of his voice, "Shut up and eat!  Shut up and eat!  Shut up and eat!"  Over and over and over, to little success. 

My brother and I explored the campground, the bathhouses (one of which I vaguely remembered) the campground office building, the weird plastic bandshell over the payphone in the corner of the visitors' parking lot.  My dad chopped wood and smoked cigars and listened to the boombox.  The afternoon waned and clouded up a bit.  Flanders, who actually looked like Flanders, kept admonishing his brood, to no avail. 

About twilight, Brian and I went to take showers (very neat because we only had a bathtub at home).  We loved having the place to ourselves, loved the feeling of being on our own.  We took a long time. 

Afterwards, it was dinnertime.  We ate Pringles, cooked our Corn King Franks over the fire (scorched exterior, flabby cold interior, delicious nonetheless) and washed it all down with more icy-cold Coke.  The mood was dampened a bit when a momma racoon ran to our picnic table and grabbed our bag of marshmallows in her teeth, but then I saw she had two babies with her, and knew they would probably enjoy them more than we would. 

Darkness fell slowly.  I still could not get over the fact that we were staying here the whole night, that we did not have to go home.  My dad smoked another cheap cigar and stoked the fire.  The trees loomed over us protectively. Lightning bugs blinked and wafted. 

Brian and I went to brush our teeth (the bathroom looked even cooler at night) then took the long way back to see all the interspersed, lit-up campsites. 

Afterwards, we sat on the picnic table by the fire.  I felt so happy then, maybe as happy as I've ever been in my life.  I didn't want the night to end, but I was very much looking forward to the tent.  So, Brian and I went in. 

We cracked a glowstick, and the swirling liquid within started to glow (orange, remember, because it was left over from Halloween) and I hung it at the top of the tent, and we lay back, looking up. 

"This is the neatest place I have ever slept!" Brian said. 

I could only concur.  Outside, my dad stood quietly over the snapping fire.  We lay on our horrible, comfortable mattress, talking and laughing.  After a long time, my dad undid the zipper and came inside.  There were three of us in a cheap tent made for two, but we didn't care. We were in our place, the three of us, exactly where we were supposed to be. It was the best night of our lives.  And we were very comfortable and glad to be there. And we slept very well. 

* 

 

In the morning, my dad made a little fire with the remnants of firewood.  We ate donuts with cocoa (a combination that makes my teeth hurt to ponder).  And then, that was it.  Dad had to work that evening and I had a baseball game.  So we packed everything up, washed up, and headed on our way, stopping briefly again at the River Shelter to look at the river one more time. 

And the trip was over, lasting a mere 30 hours. 

So, why was this trip, so short and seemingly mundane, so important to me?  Because, silly, it was the first time for everything.  It was my first camping trip with my dad and brother. (Many would follow, some with my sister in tow.) It was my first time lying down in my own little tent, something that was mine. (The concept of home, of a base, of a place where I and my friends and family are enclosed, safe, warm, comfortable, would soon become very, very important to me.)  It was my first time planning and executing a trip – and this little trip set the template for literally all the trips that came after (thousands of subsequent ones (some in different hemispheres) including a Tippecanoe jaunt every June for many years, and one July sojourn when my wife and I came to get married.)  And, mostly, because it was in a beautiful place with people I loved, and I was seeing everything with very new, completely unjaded eyes. 

I wish I could capture the feeling my brother and I had that night, lying down and looking up at the orange-glowing walls, listening to my dad poking the fire and the hush of the huge Midwestern night coming down. 

I think that feeling is what heaven is like.  I sure hope so, anyway. 

 

Chicago, IL (Hyde Park) 

July 21 – July 26, 2026