“Willis & I, Going Crabbing for the 1st Time”

I was nine or ten the first time we went camping down to Virginia Beach.  My Dad made a large cargo carrier to mount on top of the station wagon that carried the tent, cots, cook stove, and lantern, and our suit cases.  Inside the rear of the station wagon we carried the cooler, food, and other small items necessary for surviving a week away from home.  The trip down took several hours and to help with easing the stress of the drive we always left late in the evening so there would be less traffic on the road.  My brother, sister, future brother-n-law, were all sleeping while I sat up chatting with my parents to help keep them awake and make the time pass faster.  It’s funny, but I remember Mom always kept a supply of sandwich cookies up front for me and when I held out my hand she would put a cookie in it.  Eating something always helped me stay awake.

The first time we went down to Virginia Beach my folks weren’t too sure about where we were going to go camping.  Their first pick was a State Park that was handy to the coast; but, when they checked it out they found it had a lot of pine trees that would have dripped pitch all over our tent.  So, we continued to search for just the right place.  The next one was right on the sea shore and was already full up.  Being the 4th of July weekend, finding a campground with empty sites might turn out to be a real problem!  Not to be dissuaded, we continued on down a road towards a campground called “Camp Lazy-B”.  Our last name being Barton, this sounded promising.

We drove and drove and drove and then the sign on the side of the road said, “Now Entering North Carolina”.  There was no way we could turn around right there because on both sides of the road was water.  We were driving out some sort of ocean side drive and it took us many miles before we found a spot where we could turn around.  Dad took things a little slower this time and not long after crossing back into Virginia we saw the sign on the left that said, “Camp Lazy-B”.  Dad pulled in and drove up to the Camp Office where he hoped to be able to check us in.

Thankfully, they had plenty of sites open.  Mainly because this campground is not on the coast and is as we discovered, kind-of out of the way.  Dad drove around until he found a site that offered a little bit of shade and plenty of room to set up our tents, one tent for us guys and the other for my Mom and sister. Then he kicked us out and told us kids to go explore the campground while he set the tent up.  Dad was tired and didn’t want kids underfoot while he was trying to figure out the tent and how everything went together.  So, just Dad, Mom, my sister, & brother-n-law to be, set the tents up and got the site in order on their own, while my brother and I checked out the camp.