I felt so bad for this poor camper when I read this! Thank God that tents keep getting easier and easier to pitch! This picture of the pocket in which instructions were eventually found (to no avail) may bring back traumatic memories for some of you (it did for me):

I wish I’d have been there to help Katie master the old beast! She got as far as she could by herself.

This post actually reminded me of a camping fail my family had when I was about 12, which I had totally forgotten about. My dad was one of thirteen children, most of whom had six or seven kids of their own, so one family reunion, he decided we’d stay in a tent on my grandparents’ property instead of straining the house with so many others.

He was in the Navy (nine of them were), so he rented a tent from the gear locker. I swear to you, it had to have been a real life M*A*S*H tent from the Korean War, all olive green and majorly musty, heavy-duty canvas with mysterious flaps and things that we kids were assigned to hold up. Mind you, my dad had several of his Navy brothers helping him assemble the thing. I do remember wondering how we were going to effectively sleep in it when it required the use of the three of us kids and various cousins to hold it up, essentially, when my Uncle Bob, an in-law and a Marine, of all things, pulled up, took one look at the spectacle, and started laughing uproariously.

Uncle Bob equipped himself with a nice cold one, took a few sips, and started barking orders. It seems the Navy crew had put the thing up upside-down, or inside-out, or something. But the sole Marine in the family straightened the mess out double time– HOO rah!