Welcome back to our camping fun story, continued from last week, which was continued from the previous week. This ended up being a bit longer than I had thought. If you missed last week, you can read it HERE. We had gone into our tent for the night, a bit earlier than we had planned, but there were swarms of thousands of mosquitoes outside.

That is no exaggeration either. Now, when Dad was making our supper, and he didn’t want me or my brother to help for some reason, I had walked around our little island to see what was there. I found trees and plants and lots of thick moss, but absolutely no animal life whatever. I had thought that was rather strange since the island wasn’t that small.

There should have been something, such as birds, on that island, but there was nothing. Once all those mosquitoes showed up, I understood why there were no animals on that island. They would never survive with all those mosquitoes! Once we were safely in the tent, we could hear that steady hum of those mosquitoes outside.

This tent we were sleeping in was not huge. It was meant for 3 people to sleep, nothing else. I think when they said this was a 3 person tent, they were thinking of kids. We were all adults on this trip. I was the smallest of the three. Dad and my brother, being older, picked the outside edge of the tent for sleeping. That left me squished in the middle.

However, it had one good point, the ground was nice and smooth under me. My brother had a root under him and Dad had a rock under him. No matter how hard they tried, that rock and root was against their back. I settled in for a comfortable night’s sleep. Now, my Dad had told my brother to set the tent up on the hill. My brother interpreted that to mean “on the side of the hill”.

Dad meant “on top” of the hill. So, we all kept sliding down toward the door of the tent. It was a fairly steep hillside. Poor Dad, he was the heaviest and had the worst time keeping himself from sliding down. And he kept reminding my brother of this fact about every 5 minutes. Now, when we were young kids, our parents would always remind us to use the bathroom before doing certain things, like driving somewhere, or, like going inside a tent.

Dad kept sighing for a while and finally admitted he didn’t heed that principle and had to go outside. That meant opening the tent door. Dad went outside so fast he nearly took the tent with him! Doug and I were swatting mosquitoes continuously until Dad returned. He came back in with hundreds more mosquitoes. So, he decided to spray again. AAAAAAAA!!!! said Doug and I.

We hid inside our sleeping bags while Dad sprayed. Amazing we survived that. About 10 minutes later, Doug had to go out. Dad groaned. Doug went out but he couldn’t get the zipper on the tent door to close, so I got up and worked on that and finally got it down just as Doug wanted back inside. Dad sighed loudly. I had a hard time unzipping that zipper, but it finally worked and my brother came inside.

We all settled down. “Good thing it isn’t raining,” I said, “mosquitoes humming is bad enough, but listening to rain on the tent roof would be worse. Drop, drop, drop, running down the roof and dripping off the edge.” “AAAAAAA!!! Bonehead!” said Dad. Seems all the talk about rain got Dad and he had to go back outside again. At least the zipper on the door worked properly this time.

But those mosquitoes! There were a lot more coming in this time. Then I noticed that Dad left the door open. He said there was no time to close it. Anyway, I zipped it up again, just as Dad returned. Then the zipper got stuck about half way. “AAAAAAAA!!!” yelled Dad and Doug, “These mosquitoes will kill us!” While Dad was fighting with the zipper I crawled out.

“May as well take my turn now,” I said. Dad just groaned and said Bonehead again. Dad was still fighting with that zipper when I crawled back inside. Dad then tried to do the same, but he was considerably bigger than me and he sort of got stuck on the zipper. Doug and I were laughing so hard, even with all the mosquitoes.

Dad grabbed that spray and sprayed the tent again, then he yelled for the flashlight, which was a nice large one. “Shine it here,” he said, so I did. “AAAA!!!” he yelled, “not in my eyes! Bonehead!” Finally he got unhooked and we all settled down to sleep, after Dad sprayed the tent again. “We’re all gonna die!” exclaimed Doug. Finally we fell asleep.

In the morning as the sun shone on the tent, there was not one square inch (or cm either) that wasn’t covered with mosquitoes! Dad said we all move fast, take down the tent, toss everything into the boat and we get out of here. It was amazing how fast we did move too. Off we went back to where we parked the truck. Hauled the boat and all of our stuff up that rough hill and to the truck.

Surprisingly nothing odd happened. Then we went to our favorite restaurant for breakfast. What an ordeal. It was an almost fishless fishing trip. I did catch one fish. That was it. I tried to get them interested in another trip that summer, but both refused. Sigh. No sense of adventure. Well, I hope you enjoyed our little experience. Have a great weekend everyone and God bless!

Steve and Muffin.

©2025 Steve McLeod.