The Joy of Camping

Both sides of my family kind of contradict themselves. I’d say it has much less to do with my extended family and more to do with my mother and father.
Mom loves Greek food; dad hates Greek food. Mom hates roller coasters; dad loves roller coasters. Mom doesn’t like the outdoors; dad loves the outdoors.
My mother has tried camping with the family before, but she is finding it harder and harder to spend an entire week outside with my dad, my brother, and me.
Luckily, my sister hates camping just as much as my mom does.
Something about the combination of heat and bugs tends to draw them both away. But for some reason I love camping, even if I have to wake up with the sun shining in my face. If anyone has had to endure camping with a tent, they know it can become a heat box in less than 15 minutes.
Unfortunately for my family, we always seem to pick the wrong times to go camping. From the very beginning we have struggled with the weather. The rain always seems to push us out. 
I remember the first time we went and a tornado touched down miles from where we were. Another time I woke up to rain seeping in through my tent, and when I went to stand up from my air mattress I discovered my floor had turned into a lake. 
The rain is always the thing that seems to catch us. It always happens on the last day we are supposed to leave, or even before we come, and it floods the river and the camping grounds.We go through lengths to keep the water out of our tent, but when everyone else in your family is camping out in a camper, your tent that can fit 10 people starts to look real dull.

We used to stack the air mattresses in the middle of the tent in order to not touch the sides, and we would move all our belongs around the mattresses to prevent them from getting wet.
Somehow the water always found its way in, and we would have to pick up our wet belongings and trudge home covered in mud.
While the weather may be at odds against the Radke family, the rest of the trip can be very relaxing. But then again I don’t get much rest when surrounded by my family.
Some very eventful things always seem to happen on the trip that my mother and sister decided to miss out on.
One time my family decided it was a good idea to bike 18 miles for a slice of pie. The pie wasn’t even that good, but for some reason we do it every year. Another time my friend and I almost drowned in the river after it flooded, but that’s a story for another time. There was also the time my cousin ate too much sugared cereal and threw up in the bushes next to my tent.
The trip I claim to be very “relaxing” isn’t actually very relaxing. For some odd reason I decided it was a good idea to go camping with my family again.
I’m starting to see why my mother and sister avoid family trips.