Fumbling through life as a parent...

I have been trying to take the kids to the "great outdoors" as much as possible this year.
Most of the summer they were "tied up" with this or that (summer camps, summer schools, etc.).
In the past 3 weeks (between visting my mother in the hospital), I managed to take them on two outings so far.
In both I have felt to be rather a bumbling idiot trying to fumble my way through, trying to give the kids "great experiences" and those precious "bonding moments" between father and son(s).
This has been with very mixed results.
Overall I'd say the key factors are achieved, but with great awkwardness on my part...

The irony is I used to go outdoors on my own all the time, solo survivalism all times of the year, in intense deserts in the Summer, to frigid winters in the High Uintahs, etc. No one usually would go with me, I was on my own to figure things out, and at least I survived, and most of the time had a great time in the peace and tranquility of nature untouched by man.
I stopped having most of my outdoors experiences with my dad after the divorce when I was about 7 years old.
I still had occasional visits with him until I was 12 or so, but most of those visits were tied up with intensive martial arts training he had arranged for me.
So unfortunately, though I had some vague memories and primitive skills (of about 7 year old level) with fishing and the like, I didn't really get the "training" I should have had to round it out.
And it's really showing now, much to my frustration.
Also, to quote the beginning of Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings "The World is Changing....".
Things just aren't the same as when I was a kid, or not how I remember it.
It used to be so much easier to just pull down a dirt road, find a lake you liked, and make camp on the shore.
Well, here in Eastern Washington, people and companies have bought up all the roads, lakes, and lands. It's totally a different environment.
I'm not THAT old. I'm only talking about as recent as the 80's and even very early 90's when I used to do that all the time.
Even as a teenager on my own, I had no trouble just taking off in Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, Colorado and just camping just about anywhere I damn well pleased, with a camp fire, etc. I would usually not see a soul, and enjoy it very much, thank you.
Now there's people everywhere, everything is covered with fences and signs stating "No tresspassing"!
And so far I have not found that there is a single spot anywhere to freely camp, everything is reserved or pay for only facilities for camping. Argh!
Either by private companies, or local, state, or federal government agencies.
I guess Alaska and the Antarctic are all that's left on this planet (and maybe the depths of the ocean)?
So here's how things unfolded...

Several weeks back between visits to my mother in the hospital, I came back for a few days to catch up on bills and obligations at home. I had promised a couple of straight weeks with the kids before the issues with my mother suddenly occurred, so I tried to keep at least part of my word and squeeze in what I could.
I grabbed my Washington State gazetteer, and began searching for lakes with fishing not too far north of Spokane, but enough so that they appeared to be dirt roads, or better yet jeep/4x4 trails. I've held onto the Bronco specifically for this purpose.
I found what looked on the map to be a great area around Horseshoe Lake. There were also several smaller lakes around it such as Blue lake, Lost lake, and others. according to the map Horseshoe had several 4x4 trails, one dirt road, and then the other lakes had some dirt or 4x4 roads access as well.
I decided I'd take the scenic route and come in from the north east, rather than the more direct south west route.
BIG MISTAKE!
The roads were still there, but they had recently been bought up, and now have gates with combination locks on them. The surrounding neighbors had signs saying "No, we do NOT have the combinations, so do NOT ask!". The jeep trails I followed either peterred out or also ended in "No Trespassing - Logging/Mining" or gates/fences as well. The boys had fun off-roading though, so they didn't really feel it was a loss at all.
So after hours of trying different roads, some on the map, some not, we gave up and went back down south and in from the west.
There we found more dead end roads, but one main dirt road led to a narrow boat launch on horseshoe lake, with fences on either side all private property for summer cabins.
So it turned out you could only make use of 99.9% of Horseshoe lake if you had a boat, everything had been bought up for access to be impossible even on foot!
I also couldn't find ANY campgrounds during all our travels. It was getting late, so I told the boys we needed to find somewhere to camp, then we'd come back and fish from the boat launch (no dock) the following morning.
So I drove (back) to Eloika Lake (where I had come in from the North East), since it indicated there was (paid) camping there. The last place was bought (for a ridiculous $26 bucks just for a piece of dirt) just before I walked in. The owner there said there wasn't any free camping anywhere that he knew of. He said everything in the past 3-5 years of North Eastern Washington had been bought up. He suggested seeing if Pend Oreille park was open.
I went down there, and found it was open still. It was now 8:30 pm, the park gates locked up according to the ranger at 9:00 pm. I spoke with the "ranger" who was obviously intoxicated on some substance, as well he seemed very sad and lonely. Desperate for conversation.
He stated that the park used to be very busy years ago, but that it had been mostly partiers and trouble makers who had trashed the place. He'd cleared them out and kept the place nice, but in the past 2-3 years the place just died. He attributed much of that to high gasoline prices, as well as all the land in the area having been bought up so that only expensive paid recreation was available anymore, and very little free recreation was left. This meant that only the more affluent were really coming to these more remote areas any more, and if they liked the areas, they just bought up the land, rather than camp at a "lowly" campground.
So, we were the ONLY campers in the entire 400 (?) acres.
The place was well taken care off, had bathrooms with hot water and even showers!
He even allowed us to have a mellow camp fire, which was the main part of camping the boys wanted.
We stayed up until 11:00 pm telling stories, laughing, roasting weiners in the fire, eat baked beans, and having such a wonderful time, none of us wanted to go to bed. But we wanted to get up early enough to catch the fish the following morning.
So the tents were setup late, and we went to bed. But unfortunately I could NOT fall asleep. I developed a terrible nitrate headache from eating too much beef jerky and other products. I also just couldn't get confortable. The boys faded off one by one....
I have a lot more to write about this, but need to call it a night. I'll try to come back later and continue this lengthy article. Night for now.