Last week was supposed to be one in which I checked off a major goal for the year – taking that first trip to Yellowstone – but ultimately it was too far to go in too short a time, with too much left to do at home. We called it off at the last minute.

So we took a consolation trip to Hartman Creek State Park. That’s a pretty big swing – from a park 1,200 miles away to one only 28 from the house – but it was a good chance to take stock of our approach to camping, particularly with regard to planning and equipment, but also attitude.

It’s both science and art, and we’ve learned how to spend as little time as possible in preparation while maximizing enjoyment. That helps when things go wrong, and we had a few things go wrong in Hartman.

But it’s still one of the finest parks in the country, and even though we shortened our stay there by a night, it was still a successful trip. Part of that was knowing when to call it a weekend and not feel badly about it.

Never a bad time in Hartman

It can be easy to neglect our regional treasures when so many distant dreams lure us away, but my brood will never lose its huge soft spot for Hartman Creek.

The site of numerous day trips as well as our first overnight camping trip in Wisconsin, the park has a well-deserved reputation as one of the best family campgrounds in the state.

Every time we go, we ask ourselves why we don’t visit more often. It’s classic Wisconsin – the North Woods experience for those who have no family cabin, the summer camp for those who don’t have the time, money or inclination to sign up for a week or two of scheduled activity.

Once settled in, campers have the full range of options – fishing, canoeing, biking on roads or trails, plenty of hiking, sports fields, an amphitheater for interpretive programs, a dedicated swimming beach and four named lakes in the park proper.

You can ride horses and wander beyond the boundaries of the park itself into a couple of pretty impressive state natural areas (Emmons Creek and Pope Lake SNAs).

In the best summer weather, you’ll get that lovely blue sky with just the right number of puffy clouds, the towering pine groves releasing their resin scent, the shade of hardwoods as you walk down a quiet trail. The breeze will whisper on the trail and be interrupted by kids shrieking happily, whether distant or nearby.

At night, the drifting wood-smoke smell will set off a chain reaction: the desire to have your own campfire crackling, the roasting of the marshmallows, the melting of the Hershey’s onto a graham cracker, the gooey mess on hands and lips, and then the repeating of the s’mores cycle.

Quiet conversations and laughter from nearby families and groups will float over, as will a bit of music, and if you’re lucky, it’s all completely natural and unobtrusive, because everyone is camping together.

Trip after trip, year after year, we do these things. Whether at the family cabin or a YMCA camp, in a back yard or at a state park, this is the stuff that makes the season, and we could just as well call Hartman “Summer Camp Park,” because it’s the epitome of all of it.

Disaster? Naturally, but no big deal

That’s the romantic view of summer, but it sometimes requires ignoring certain problems. The neighbors aren’t always polite, and your campsite might not be the best one.

We decided to try Hartman on the same day we would have left for Yellowstone, which was Thursday last week. We knew we could probably secure one of the park’s first-come, first-served sites as long as we didn’t show up Friday afternoon.

Sure enough, we got site No. 3 (the park sets aside 22, but most were gone by mid-Thursday afternoon). The site is in hardwoods and next to a pit toilet, which has a convenience factor late at night or early in the morning but also means a few slamming doors at all hours.

Because No. 3 is at the single entrance/exit, it gets all the auto traffic that further sites aren’t exposed to. We weren’t thrilled with that, but reserved sites on the far loops were gone, and we were simply happy to be able to camp on a moment’s notice.

And it truly was that. Our Yellowstone trip had been adequately planned, but we never actually started packing, which usually doesn’t take long because we’ve got a good organizational system for gear and a local-purchase system for groceries or meals. For Hartman, we basically threw a few things together and left.

For a family weekend in Wisconsin, we almost always bring our screened shelter, a 14-by-10-foot structure to keep most bugs out of our food area. It’s big enough to cover a picnic table and our camp kitchen gear, along with a storage tub or two.

On last week’s trip, we made sure to bring our tent’s “garage” – an extension that zips onto our rain fly and provides extra shade or covered storage.

We knew it might rain, and boy, did it, starting about midnight and continuing for several hours.

We’d stowed our camp chairs in the garage, which gave us places to sit and survey the damage Saturday morning. Mostly, it was wet stuff from the screened shelter, which had collapsed and knocked over our small kitchen from atop a tub.

In our temporarily restored shelter, early in the afternoon, we held what might have to serve as the structure’s wake, eating a lunch of potato chips and cheese curds. That was after our planned meal – a full pot of pesto pasta – got plopped into the dirt.

In addition to the bloodied nose my daughter got during her traditional branch fight with her older brother, we’d had plenty of minor irritants as we approached our third night in the park. We decided to pull up stakes, but not because of the irritants.

It was just that we’d had our fill of fun. The weather, while mostly cloudy for the first two days, had been dry except for Friday night. We got in a couple of good walks, and the kids got to swim.

We played Bananagrams. We had plenty of good junk to eat (who needs pasta anyway?) and stayed dry in our tent, which is more than many other sites could say – we saw dozens of wet sleeping bags hung out to dry on Saturday.

Mainly, we decided to leave because we had relaxed well for a couple of days and wanted to have plenty of time to clean and temporarily store our slightly damp and dirty gear.

It had been a great trip, and we wanted to start getting ready for the next one.