For two months, I’ve been excited about tagging along with Joseph High School seniors on their weeklong journey to Snake River.

Chatting on the eight-hour bus ride to a basketball playoff game in Molalla, coach Larry Nall said the annual trek “forever stamps Wallowa County on the kids.” If we had been negotiating, he would have sold me with that remark. The Agriculture Class trip is a completely new experience for me. Taking beginner’s lessons on horse riding was a must – as my instructor, Gail Murphey of Lostine, could tell you.

Back on the east coast, the closest I came to such an expedition were the summer camping trips my family took to Acadia National Park in Maine. Every July for six years, my brother Marcos and I, along with our sisters, Sofia and Alina, drove up Interstate 95 from our home near Washington D.C. It began as a single night’s stay – kind of a bummer since the drive was 20 hours, one way. But gradually, the trips extended to a week.

For kids growing up in the suburbs, we were quite a team for the outdoors. Though Markie pretty much handled all of the really hard work, we each tackled specific assignments.

You could call Markie the pilot or commander. Not only did he do all of the driving, he bought the supplies, packed the car, set up the tent, rowed our canoe at Echo Lake and cooked at the campsite. He even cooked in the car! Markie snuggled strips of meat, rolled up in tinfoil, into various crannies around the engine. After a few hours of driving, he’d pull over to a rest stop, pop the hood and serve dinner.

Markie was especially adept at loading all our cargo into the tiny ’86 Dodge Duster. The morning we were to leave home, he scrutinized every inch of the back hatch and systematically crammed duffle bags and crates into every possible crevice. He took a certain pride in his work. Heaven forbid we add something else midway through the job. He’d stay silent – but such a complication brought about a furrow in his brow as he scanned the hatch again, recalculating the dimensions. Yeah, if a sibling suddenly remembered something, they were better off tucking it under their shirt for the duration of the drive.

Next to Markie sat Sofia the navigator, who always rode shotgun. She loves travel. Fittingly, Sofi married into the Air Force. Her husband, Tom, is currently based in England. Growing up, Sofi read countless fictions and textbooks about other regions and countries. Heck, she read everything. Each week, she returned eight books to our local library and took out another eight. Every summer, Sofi had ideas for our camping trip. Eventually, lunch at pretty Jordan Pond became a regular part of it. Must have gotten the notion from one of those books.

In the back seats, the little kids – Alina and I – had easier responsibilities. Armed with her mini-boom box and CDs, Alina was our disc jockey. The first year, radio stations faded out of reception almost as soon as we found one playing anything. The Duster didn’t have a CD player, so we bought a cheap little box and trusted Alina to avoid any of my music.

The older kids also left Alina, the youngest, in charge of keeping a written log of our trips. The following in an excerpt from her records of July 6, 2001:

11:00 a.m. Rain stopped, skies finally clearing so we’re renting a canoe at Echo Lake.

11:30 a.m. There’s a mini island in the lake so we rowed here to eat lunch.

12:30 p.m. Time to return the canoe … Climbing back in, Hector tipped us over … Our puppy … almost drowned …

The rest of the writing is smeared and illegible. The pages are stuck together.

Meanwhile, I had two major responsibilities: food and fire. In the car, I sat next to the cooler stocked with sodas and snacks. Anyone hungry during the long drives had to place orders with me. Alina also sat next to the cooler – but see, the direction the lid opened, she would have had to snake her arm around and blindly grab anything. The only possible answer was to give me the job … with a title: Food Guy. Once we set up camp, I quickly moved up in rank thanks to my skill at starting campfires. The first couple of years, we struggled to get any sort of blaze going. Then I managed to make a good one – and before I knew it, I was typecast for life.

On rare occasions, my siblings asked me to do something else, and serious repercussions would result. One year, Markie grew tired on the drive home so he reluctantly let me take over behind the wheel. A couple minutes later, we were cruising southbound through upstate New York when I – still Food Guy at heart – saw a sign for an Applebee’s restaurant at the next exit. Refreshed by dinner, everybody suddenly liked the idea of me driving. But then I got back onto I-95 and … slammed the break pedal. Traffic at a complete stand still. A mile ahead of us, an 18-wheeler had overturned across all four lanes. It took me 45 minutes to breach that mile.

Thinking back, it would’ve been great to be on horseback. Unfortunately, Food Guy started learning his lessons too late to bail himself out that day. But they’ll make a world of difference getting to and from Snake River.

Hector del Castillo is the Chieftain’s sportswriter. E-mail comments and questions to hdelcastillo@wallowa.com.