Kernville

The 3-day Big Bend mama camping expedition was rained out. Looking at my fortune's worth of new camping gear, I decided to make the best of things and use my long weekend for a mother-son camping adventure in the mountains. Motel camping - I really wasn't interested in pitching a tent in 35 degrees.

The mountains were amazing, we pulled off on a remote side-road and hiked around the boulders until Gavin said his stuffed cat was tired. Lake Isabella twinkled, the rental fishing boats bobbed at the docks. As Gavin threw rocks into the water, I poked around in the sand and found a burned up lace high-heel shoe and scraps of clothing. Looked around for a dead body, but didn't find one.

In Kernville, we parked by the river and watched a bunch of girl scouts in wet suits practice paddling the air for their rafting adventure. The entire economy of Kernville is centered around white-water rafting. It is also run almost solely by desperate young men, which is either romantic or creepy, depending on how you look at things. We walked through the village from lodge to lodge, discovering that seasonal rates begin whenever the hell the owners feel like it. At one inn, Gavin rang the desk bell and a redheaded man with a tragic handlebar mustache popped out, did a double-take, got weird, and gestured us into a back room to ask the owner about rates. The owner appeared like a wolf - or a chupacabra - while the mustache man stood off to the side like someone who was about to watch a snake swallow a frog. I was the frog. After discussing rates with the leathery, tattooed, man we made our escape. "Oh god! My heart! Heart attack! Oh, my heart!" I heard him say from the doorway as I hefted Gavin up onto my hip to hurry across the road. I don't know what that was all about, but I was not sticking around to get murdered.

We picked the motel that fleeced us the least and headed up the mountain to find the redwoods. Gavin fell asleep in the back seat, his head bobbling from side to side on the switchback roads. It was closed. Coming back down from the roadblock, I followed three lumber trucks. They pulled aside to let me pass them next to Durwood, my great-aunt's lodge which was a magical place when I was a kid. As I stared nostalgically at the cabins, one of the truck drivers intercepted my loving gaze and thought it was for him, leaping ahead of the other trucks to chase my car down the mountain. I stepped on the gas.

We played by the river, explored a hobo-den under the bridge, watched a troop of boy scouts hunt for the troop of girl scouts in the campground, and ate dinner at the restaurant. As the sun went down, we headed to the hotel. After about an hour, Gavin declared he wanted to go home. What!? Well heck, if he wasn't having fun it wasn't worth the $85 to spend the night, particularly since the mountain trail was closed and there would be no redwood hiking in the morning. I got half my money back, counted it as a loss, and then backed into their carport. By which I mean the support beam, not the parking space. Great. During the ensuing insurance hassles, the manager's young daughter came out and discovered Gavin. The two played ball with her uncle, who gave me a bag of lemons. As we finally buckled up to leave, Gavin declared that he wanted to stay after all. I banged my head on the steering wheel. We drove home in the dark.

But it was awesome anyway, a beautiful day in our lazy village in the wooded mountains. Finding our way home, bit by bit.