So, I think I posted a version of this story on the other thread, but just to get it rolling, I'll share again.
A couple years back, I bought a piece of hunting land that is fully primitive and needs a pretty capable off road rig to get down to. Well, my dad at the time, had a severely messed up knee that has now been replaced and my son was 2 at the time. He's since been diagnosed with autism, but at the time, he was showing as a typical 2 year old with tendencies that didn't raise flags at the time, but I recognize now.
So, I was working night shift at the time and needed some sleep and prep prior to the trip. It's about a 3 hour drive and we left around 1500. My truck, a Cummins Ramcharger, started grinding the rear end right around 1730 when all the shops were closed for the weekend. So, being an hour and a half away from home, I limped into a shop's parking lot and waited as brother in law and sister drove my dad's less off road capable Ram 2500 out to where we were. So, 4 hours in to a 3 hour trip, we unload everything out of the RC and into the 2500 and decide to press on.
We get to camp around 1900 and, with a bit of daylight left, I unload my dune buggy to show dad the land. Which he's never seen due to the knee. Well, the variator in the CVT broke during a small creek crossing and the buggy was dead, literally in the water. After hauling my son and dad to the shore, I have to push the dang thing out of the creek in the pitch black of night without any moonlight, of course.
So, by the time I get the buggy loaded back up and camp set up it's about 2300, and the bugs are gathering near the light I need to set up camp. This prompts my son to commence losing his mind about the bugs, giving my dad and his lack of mobility a tough time, but if we cut off the light, the dark equally terrified my son. Mid set up, a boar, or what we think was a boar, threatened us from the nearby brush, and I finally got into bed around 0100. My son, having never slept near another human being was energized. My dad had no energy to even get into a tent, so was laid out with the hogs and his AR15 in a chair, and I was so sweaty in my land's windless valley that my son asked me "Dada, where did you take a shower?" Among a million other things. After struggling to sleep until 0300, remember, still on night shift.
I thought of the fact that with the buggy down, my dad wouldn't see anything more of the land than he already saw, and my scouting trip was already dashed. So, I hollered out to him an offer to pack up camp and get back on the road. He agreed, so he and my son slept in his truck while I packed. Got up the trail and oh the road around 0430, and drove for about an hour and a half until exhaustion caught up with me after the very short rest from my previous shift. My dad took over then would need to pull over. Sterling would wake up and cry realizing he wasn't in his bed.
In total, we got home, switching drivers and napping every 30 minutes or so, at around 0900. So, we spent over 10 hours driving on a 6 hour drive, had no sleep, and were all miserable.
It took me a month to clean up the camping gear after that one, I had a huge distaste for it. Luckily, that remains our only bad trip of them all and now my rig is fully built for my son and myself and my Dad's truck houses him and my mom. My son adores camping despite the rough start and asks me daily to go camping.
