It isn’t really called the “Scump Cabin”. The actual name is the “Scaup Cabin”. Scaup is a kind of duck. Scump is an malaprop written by possibly drunk people writing a log entry in the Scaup Cabin journal back in the Jurassic Age.

So, if I remember accurately (and I probably don’t and I didn’t have a blahg then so I can’t check), I picked up the beach urchins from their last day of school. I think they were finishing 3rd grade and kindergarten but I don’t exactly remember. We drove up to the Rifle River Recreation Area and met up with the UU and The Beautiful Renee for a wonderful fun-filled camping weekend at the Scaup Cabin.

Alas, I was not a particularly happy camper… It rained almost the entire time we were there (and there were moe-skee-toes galore). There was an outhouse (which I can easily deal with) but not a shower… I know I washed myself including my hair (a must) every morning but I can’t remember if I had a camping shower then or if I just pumped water and managed somehow. I am pretty resourceful at bathing (think swimming in L. Superior) and I was invisible to anyone besides the Scaup Cabin folks (my family) who knew I was gonna be down there bathing and weren’t going to interrupt me.

<TMI>Probably the worst thing was that I was not adequately prepared for being a still, uh, fertile woman. Not expecting and, uh, not expecting. I discovered this at lunch halfway through an otherwise loverly canoe trip and had to make a shameless grab for paper towels. Not fun but I made it through the rest of the canoe trip and I think we made an emergency shopping trip to Rose City or wherever later that afternoon.</TMI>

We did have some fun though. The canoe trip was great overall and the “Scump” Lake cabin log was a riot to read. An Ann Arbor teenager stuck with her blended family over New Year’s. The “Scump Lake” gang who inspired my title. They may not have been the most literate writers on earth but they WROTE! And that inspired some other folks to write some creative stories about their own visits to the “Scump” Cabin. And then there was our group. The GG handwrote a chunk of the Jurassic Park book into the log… I dunno if the Rifle River Rec Area still leaves log books in their cabins. Nowadays, there is good internet access there and people can post whatever they want wherever they want, including texting pics to their family, which I enjoyed receiving all weekend.

So a late winter weekend at the Scaup Cabin reveals a lot of the beauty I missed all those years ago when I was being grumpy about being in rain and moe-skee-toes and no shower.

And, then there are the new-fangled LED lights that you can set up in the Scaup Cabin or anywhere! Back in the day we were using candles or lanterns or whatever. The beach urchins used LED lights of various sorts. I don’t remember that there was a heater in the cabin but there must have been if people were staying there on New Year’s, just that we didn’t need it in June.

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