In a Tent or a Resort, Vacation’s Cool

In our two days at Vermont’s Basin Harbor Club, we didn’t see one mother giving her kid a haircut. It’s not that kind of place.

This Wisconsin KOA is, though, and one by one Jo Ann Hughley’s kids step forward to get clipped outside their little log Kamp Kabin.

Before we talk about Wisconsin, though, let’s go back to Basin Harbor, a New England resort with sufficient grace that the overused term “quintessential” would not provoke a blush.

My wife, Pam, our three children and I are on the road this summer working hard to understand issues concerning the American family. Contrary to a persistent misconception, we are not on vacation. But vacation is integral to the topic at hand.

Lest The Times’ bean counters hyperventilate, I’ll say right here that we did not actually stay at Basin Harbor. We slept in our rented RV at Button Bay State Park a few miles away, then followed a cornfield-lined road to its end at the resort’s Lake Champlain shore.

Parking our (often) beloved behemoth in the grass beside the tennis courts (Don’t gawk, Muffy; it’s not polite), we set out to absorb a Vermont resort vacation.

Basin Harbor sits on 700 pampered acres, along rock cliffs that face across the lake to the sheer edge of the Adirondack wilderness.

Remember as a kid, when you would strain your arms against a friend’s resistance, then feel them rise involuntarily when released? Well, people here move along the flower-lined paths with the weightless gait that follows the relief of life’s pressures.

The occasional whir of a golf cart ferrying uniformed staff and a skirmish between blue jays and squirrels are the only disruptions of the quietude.

As we stroll, we encounter a painter at an easel. Emily, 10, watches for a moment as the vine-covered stone building before us takes shape on canvas. Then the artist hands her the brush and lets her daub on a few tree leaves. (Ahh, the generosity engendered by tranquillity!)

Just outside the ancient main lodge, lawn and gazebo tempt chronologically diverse clusters to gather for family portraits. Bright red, yellow and blue Adirondack chairs offer perfect views of family dynamics compressed into the moments between camera clicks. Watch uncles and cousins jostle for rank. Watch linen-clad toddlers poke in the flower beds (“Mom! They’re eating beetles!”). Watch a teenage black sheep unsettle the clan’s self-appointed propriety queen.

Then turn your eyes down to the bay where budding adolescents fumble through their first flirtations by showoff diving from floating docks. There is pure joy in their freedom--and don’t dare suggest that they have not really escaped the familial embrace so much as they have edged out like tendrils, tentatively seeking to expand the gene tree.

That families flock to Basin Harbor Club is not accidental.

Ardelia Beach established the resort in 1886 as a working farm where city folk could come to kick back and, if they wanted, help bale some hay. The farmhouse expanded into a lodge. The lodge spawned a “cottage colony.” An 18-hole golf course and airstrip and child-activity center materialized--all under the stewardship of four generations of Beaches.

Today, siblings Pennie and Bob Beach run the show, catering to families that in some cases have been returning to the resort for as many generations as the Beaches have owned it.

The Beaches tell me that when they were growing up, some of their best friends were guests’ children.

“There have been a lot of summer romances, a lot of great marriages,” says Bob--who married a guest himself.

Pennie says she watches knowingly as her two teens enjoy the same seasonal cycle--shy hello, wistful goodbye, excited summer reunion--that made up her youth.

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The guests’ approach to family vacations also seem to go through cycles, she says. For a while, in the ‘70s and ‘80s, couples used Basin Harbor to escape their kids. But in recent years, they’ve come to view the resort as a place to tighten bonds. “With both parents working, there is greater emphasis on using vacation as a time to regroup as a family,” she says.

For strictly journalistic reasons, my family samples the Basin Harbor life. On a balmy afternoon, we hop into a power boat and take turns skittering across the lake in an inner tube.

That night we dress in the RV--coats and ties, well-pressed skirts and blouses--then join the flow of families drifting toward the formal dining room, where a pianist tinkles Mozart. Walking along the bay, past well spaced white cottages shaded by ancient maples, we feel part of a village where no one works except the servants--and even they have no taste for Marx or Mao, given the opiate quality of the summer air.

At dinner, Robert fiddles with his bow tie and casts sidelong looks at Emily, who glances at Ashley, who glances at Pam to verify the profusion of silverware’s proper sequence.

The spell is sweet, but doesn’t last.

Just a few days later, we eat pancakes on a picnic table at that Kampground in Wisconsin, having raced our RV too hastily through a series of visits with family and friends.

Basin Harbor offers boats and tennis and golf.

This KOA, owned by recent immigrants from Washington state, offers a water slide, putt-putt golf, tubing on the Namekagon River and sit-down, pedal-powered rental trikes.

As our family eats, a herd of these bikes storms through the campsites kicking up dust. Some of these young riders belong to Jo Ann Hughley and her husband, Arnie; others--including three adopted Colombian sons--to their friends John and Becky Hogan.

The families are neighbors in Duluth, Minn., about 75 miles away. They’ve been coming to this KOA for years now as a summer getaway.

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At Basin Harbor, we talked to lots of families. Karen and Jim Hall of Florida--”My husband owns real estate, I do the wifey thing”--were not atypical. They and their three young children were spending a week at Basin Harbor, after a week in Kennebunk, Maine. They planned to cap their summer with a week on Martha’s Vineyard.

“We feel very strongly about the importance of vacation,” Karen Hall tells us. “We have our children for such a short time. During the school year there’s so much more going on--they’re always busy with friends. This is our time to be together, to instill family values.”

In Wisconsin, Jo Ann Hughley clipped hair and said about the same thing.

“At home, one kid’s always off to swimming, another’s off to football. This forces us to function as a family a little more. It’s an opportunity to be together.

“When you camp, you forget your problems at home for a couple of days,” she says. “You don’t worry about all the mundane baloney of life.”

In fact, these testimonies echo what we’ve heard in every part of the country.

Resort accouterments are great if you can afford them. But a Kamp Kabin nestled amid row upon row of trailers and RVs can be pretty great too.

Lakes, mountains, rivers, fine restaurants and fast-moving inner tubes are also great.

But the most important thing a vacation offers is the most precious and nonrenewable of resources--time.

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On the Web: Visit the Sipchens on the World Wide Web at https://www.latimes.com/trip/ for maps, journals and sounds from the family’s trip.