Snug and warm in my sleeping bag, I listened to the peaceful sounds of loons and ducks. I was in Paradise — but Paradise was just this side of Hell.

Actually, it was closer to the Twilight Zone. As we drove down a winding gravel road through the boonies on a Friday night in search of Paradise Resort on Moose Lake ("near" Bemidji), my husband remarked that he was waiting for Rod Serling to pop out of the darkness.

Submitted for your approval, the story of a family, driving down a lonely road in the middle of nowhere, in search of paradise. Little do they know they’re traveling deeper and deeper into the Twilight Zone.

I’d been thinking the same thing; so, we later learned, had Bob’s dad (the whole Swenson clan was meeting for our annual family camping weekend).

When we finally found the place, we discovered that the roomy campsites we’d reserved had been virtually taken over by a bunch of trailer campers who stay at Paradise every year. They’d been told the campground was full, but came anyway and insisted on staying.

When one of our party complained that we wouldn’t have room to set up our big tents, he was told by one of the owners, "Well, maybe your tents are just too damn big." Basically, the message was "if you don’t like it, you can leave."

We didn’t like it, but we didn’t leave. We squeezed our four tents into open space next to the trees and decided to make the best of it.

It wouldn’t have been so bad if there hadn’t been only one community campfire — we’re used to staying at campgrounds where each single site or a group site has its own fire. The campers who had taken our spots invited us to join them around the fire, but it wasn’t like there was any room.

Instead, we crowded into the cabin that my in-laws had rented. When we went to bed about 1 a.m., the campers next door were just getting started (they had a lot of bottles on the picnic table to go through). I finally fell asleep sometime after 2.

Saturday wasn’t too bad during the day, since they slept most of the time. A cute little raccoon got stuck in a tree near the lodge, and I took pictures of it. Later, I walked by the tree and looked up just in time to see one of the owners shoot it three times and cart it off in a plastic bag with the garbage — all of this in front of a bunch of our kids, who thought it was awful. I heard the guy say something about the coon being "sick," but it was probably simply scared — there was a dog staring so intently into that tree that I assumed it was a statue. I later heard that the raccoon had been a "nuisance." Heaven forbid the resort allow any elements of nuisance to bother its campers.

Later that night, we actually got some time around the campfire since the other campers were in the lodge with their gallon jug of "yucca," basically lemonade with a quart of vodka that they mixed by passing it around and shaking it. I went to bed (or to bag) at around 1 a.m. after they came back and gave me a taste of that potent stuff.

At 3 a.m. I woke up to go to the bathroom and they were talking about going to sleep. When I got back into my sleeping bag, I heard a bunch of new voices, so I don’t know how long they stayed up. I just know they were loud, loud enough to be heard over the blaring of country music from two radios, one in a camper and the other by the fire.

These radios were on probably 18 hours a day, whether the campers were there or not, playing only country. I don’t hate country, but it isn’t my favorite. At one time, my 18-year-old niece drowned out the stuff by playing Nine Inch Nails, which was weird but at least provided a break.

In the lodge, the jukebox was 100 percent country. They had the popular tunes, but then there were some real doozies. I played four of them: "Walleye," "Fishin Wit Fred," "Da Fish Fight Song" and "It’s Chitlin Time."

The morning we left, I stopped in to get a postcard (of a squirrel). The owner said, "Everything worked out all right, didn’t it?" Right.

The rest of the week formed our vacation trip, which we spent at the Swenson family cabin in Waskish. The cabin is on the Tamarac River, which connects with nearby Upper Red Lake.

The rain didn’t give us much chance to do anything, but at least we got to go to sleep whenever we wanted. And we were more than civil to the nuisance in the yard — we gave all our scraps to the raccoon and watched him from behind the curtains.

Upper Red Lake is extremely shallow, so when you go swimming, you really go wading ... and wading ... and wading. The water level goes from your ankles to your knees to your thighs to your knees to your ankles.

We went to the beach twice. Upper Red is so big you can barely make out the other side, and when there are whitecaps, it’s like an ocean without the salt.

With the rain and wind, we never got around to putting the boat in the water, but we did go for a nice canoe ride on the day we went home.

Even though I didn’t get to go fishing, I didn’t get to go hiking, and I cut my only country drive short after sloshing through three washouts before I could find a place to turn around, it wasn’t so bad being stuck indoors (although my fingers were itchy — I really started to long for a laptop computer). We did have some of the comforts of home to keep the kids busy (Nintendo and VCR), we had board games and jigsaw puzzles, and I had the time to read three books. The difference in being stuck at home and stuck somewhere else is that at home there is always something to do — and most of it involves work.

Most people say that when their vacation is over, they’re ready to come home. I’m never ready — the longer I stay away, the less I want to go home.