Strib business reporter and guest blogger Matt McKinney braves the wilds of Wisconsin with his family.

My family slept on the ground. We ate like hoboes. And it was all my fault.

The family vacation this summer was the usual last minute scramble to find something fun and cheap. The budget ruled out airplane tickets and sons Eamon, 2 1/2, and Quinn, 2 months, ruled out a lengthy road trip, so I pitched a car camping adventure across northern Wisconsin.

At least it was an easy sell to Quinn.

My wife gave me an uneasy OK as I laid out the plan: one night of staging at a Duluth hotel and then into the bush, pacifiers and all, wandering the Lake Superior shore by day and sleeping in a tent by night, with the glittering jewel of Bayfield and cozy hotel rooms waiting for us at journey’s end on the other side of the state.

It sounded daunting, but in the end camping with babies turned out to be a lot easier than either of us expected.

Poor Quinn, though. Here we were planning his first outing into the world and it would be from the back seat of a Saturn. Eamon, the family socialite, hit New York and Los Angeles before he turned 1. The photos of him peeking out of his stroller in Times Square will no doubt turn up when he debuts on Broadway. It’s just that with our first son we wouldn’t have dreamed of taking him into the woods, unless it was fake woods at the Macy’s flower show.

Now, less protective, more realistic, we packed the car and steered north.

Some notes about gear. We used an enormous tent from Target, one that has separate rooms, a screened-in porch, and something about it that says the laws of physics will bend to accommodate its size. It would house everyone comfortably, including Quinn, who would sleep beside us inside the tent in his own screened-in crib. If the mosquitoes somehow broke into the main tent, at least he could watch in comfort as we writhed.

A second, mini tent from Ikea was necessary to give Eamon something to do while I set up the larger tent. He’s always glad to help.

We brought a large sleeping pad and blankets, basic kitchen gear, a cooler full of food, some matches for campfires, and a candle lantern. Plan B was to run to a hotel room if anything drastic went down.

Five minutes from the house, our confidence wavered and we drove straight to Bayfield, a handbook of hotels in hand.

The savior of our camping trip was an anonymous ranger at the National Park Service office in Bayfield, who calmly told us that a city campground less than a mile away had views of the lake and picnic tables. And that’s what we found a few minutes later, our adventure back on and the hotel handbook stashed in the trunk.

Some highlights. Eamon watched as I assembled the tent, then asked, “Dad, Dad. Where’s our house?” I answered in an enthusiastic tone that would have frightened me if it had come from another adult: “We’re not using a house. We have a tent!” He didn’t ask again.

The lake was freezing, but Eamon jumped in, a picture of glee. We drew up boundaries to keep everyone out of the poison ivy. We played with sticks and went for walks. The black flies swarmed everywhere until sundown, but Eamon never mentioned them once. Quinn slept like a machine in his crib. And we cooked two dinners over a wood campfire, prompting a long talk on our second night about hoboes and trains that left a lingering fear in me that my sons may have been inspired by all of that.

After the fire burned out we all went for a walk under a night sky twinkling with stars, ending up on the Lake Superior shore where waves hissed and crashed on a sandy beach that was more Mexico than the Upper Midwest.

We emerged from the woods the next day, our faces smudged. We had sustained just one casualty, after I expertly showed everyone where not to touch the candle lantern when it’s burning.

That night we took a hotel room in Bayfield at Greunke’s First Street Inn, a favorite and funky local haunt. It rained that night, but as we slept in the Inn’s “Rose room,” we listened to the storm outside and felt like we had just gotten away with something.

Next year we’ll go for three nights.

This entry was posted on Thursday, September 6th, 2007 at 8:37 am and is filed under Family Life, Guest Bloggers, Main. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.