It’s the 4th of July weekend again and our family was getting ready for another week long camping trip.  I reckon, I was twelve or thirteen the first time we went camping in the Virginia Beach area of the state of Virginia.  Dad had made a large cargo carrier to mount on top of the station wagon.  It was huge and was able to carry our tent(s), cots, cook stove, lantern, and our suit cases.  The rear of the station wagon was where we carried the cooler, food, and other small items we would need for a week away from home. 

The trip to Virginia Beach, Virginia, took several long hours, and to help ease the stress of the drive, Dad chose to leave late in the evening so there would be less traffic on the road to deal with.  Everyone slept except for me and my folks.  I sat up chatting with my parents to help keep them awake, and make the time pass faster.  There are a lot of cool things you see at night that you don’t see during the day.  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 to her, she would always put a cookie in it.  Eating something always helped me stay awake.  How do we spell stay awake?  SUGAR!  I loved lots of sugar!  What kid doesn’t?

This being our first time going to Virginia Beach my parents didn’t know where we were going to go camping for sure.  Dad’s first choice was the State Park that was right on the Atlantic Ocean coastline; but, Dad found out it had a lot of pine trees that might drip pitch all over our tent and besides, I believe they were all full up.  So, we continued to search for just the right place.  Sea Side Campground was the next one they checked, but it was right on the sea shore and was already full up.  Great being the 4th of July weekend, locating a campground with empty sites might be a real problem!  But we were there so, we continued on down a road towards another campground called “Camp Lazy-B”.  Lazy-B, Lazy-Barton, this campground might have possibilities.  Finding it would be the fun part because it was quite away out of Virginia Beach.