[11/7/04]Promising weekends don’t usually start with, “I’ll pick you up in Detroit,” but that’s exactly the way the scheming began for planning the first time I had gone camping since I was a kid.

The scheme started with the cheap flights courtesy of ValuJet from Jackson to Detroit. And Detroit was a mere four hours from my camping companion’s home in Toronto.

We would go camping at a provincial park on Lake Erie in Windsor, Ontario.

This was supposed to be a romantic weekend so, naturally, I packed too many of the wrong kind of clothes. What stands out most was that I packed a dress. It was loose and floral cotton, but a dress nonetheless.

I spent the first day changing clothes, trying to find the right combination of comfort and cute.

But the weekend took on a life of its own.

Everybody on both sides of the border seemed to have the same idea because the park was crawling with people. This was no weekend for privacy. There were RVs, campers, hot showers, barbecue grills, squealing children and neighbors everywhere.

My friend kept apologizing, repeating frequently that “this is not normally the kind of camping I do,” as if I in my floral sundress and matching sandals was going to think he was a sissy.

It was in July, and it turned out that it was not only the hottest weekend of the year, but the hottest in years. Water in the Great Lakes never really warms up, though, so in spite of the blistering heat, the water in Lake Erie was like ice. We’d swelter on the beach feeling like we’d never be cool again. When we couldn’t take it anymore, we’d steel ourselves with thoughts of polar bear dives, and take the plunge. We’d stay in the water as long we could stand it, and go start the whole cycle again.

The weekend turned out to be not so much about romance as about staying hydrated.

We made what would be the first of many camp stews. We finished just moments before the bottom fell out of the sky.

We woke up Sunday morning to find out that a giant tree had crashed, narrowly missing several campsites, including ours.

The most memorable thing about the weekend, though, was the herb stand where I insisted we stop even though nobody was working there. I took two big healthy pots of basil and oregano. We left $3. Those were the first of many plants that I smuggled across the U.S.-Canada border.

I don’t remember at what point I wadded up the dress and stopped showering but by the time I got back to the Detroit airport, I was filthy. I had on shorts and hiking shoes and a man’s shirt. My hair was scraped back in a ponytail, and there were pots of herbs stuffed in my pack that I had hidden under the car seat driving through customs. I thought that it didn’t matter if I was dirty. I’d be home in a couple of hours.

But there was a backup for departing planes. We were number 20th in line for takeoff. We sat on the Detroit runway for an hour. Remember, this was a ValuJet flight so they kept the air conditioning off while still on the ground. I was hot and I stunk. And, I wasn’t the only person on the flight who stunk.

But every now and then, the scent of basil would waft through the air. And it made me smile.

Sonya Kimbrell is features editor of The Vicksburg Post. E-mail her at skimbrell@vicksburgpost.com.