It's not much to look at, the old motor home on the side of my house. The '75 Dodge Class C's warped yellow siding and rusting steel bumper are impossible to miss when driving past. Friends and neighbors affectionately tease me about the "old beast" that seems to wilt on my RV pad from fall to spring.

"You sure that thing's gonna start up?" somebody inevitably asks. "Should I stick around in case you need a tow?"

Oh, they tease me -- until we find ourselves huddled over a dying campfire in a chilly Oquirrh canyon.

Because like most worn and rugged things, the old beast is right at home in the mountains. Add freezing temperatures and some unseasonal snow to the mix, and suddenly the rust bucket I found for $800 on KSL.com looks like a palace on wheels.

"I think you should get KP duty," said my buddy John as I rolled into the campground for a father-and-sons outing in Settlement Canyon last Friday. He, like the rest of the young dads in camp, was setting up his tent. Reason No. 1 to buy a cheap old motor home: camp is already set up.

As the boys scrambled out into the snow-dusted forest, I walked back to make sure our supplies had survived the trip. The coach was filled with the scents of mountain air and musty wood -- a combination that brought back a flood of memories from my youth.

I credit my father for my love of the outdoors. A true wilderness lover, he took us to the mountains as often as he could. Whether we were fishing at Strawberry or backpacking in the High Uintas, Dad was in his element -- and I was thrilled to be with him. Many of my happiest childhood memories are of mountains, lakes, old trailers and tents.

Those early adventures left an enduring stamp on my soul. Images of pump lanterns and canvas sleeping bags were seared into my memory, along with the heavy scent of pure deet Muskol and stories that never got old, no matter how many times we told them.

There was the time my little brother, Dustin, and I sat on the shores of Deer Creek Reservoir and ate the entire block of Velveeta out of Dad's tackle box as a side dish to the sandwiches he had prepared. Yeah, we knew it was for the fish and wasn't exactly fresh off the store shelf. But it sure beat salmon eggs and garlic-scented marshmallows -- both of which we tried, of course.

I always chuckle at the time we finally figured out why a fellow Boy Scout was having such a difficult time backpacking in Granddaddy Basin. When we reached camp -- over 4 miles from the trailhead -- the exhausted scout set his weighty pack down and pulled from it a month's worth of food, two massive walkie-talkies and a lawn chair. The boy, now a scoutmaster himself, has yet to live that one down.

And I'll never forget the time when Ryan Heiner stood up on a homemade log raft 50 yards out into Mohawk Lake and dared Richard Brough to try to skip a rock that far. Ever up for a challenge, Richard selected a nice flat stone and hurled it toward the raft. The stone skipped several times before hitting the snickering Ryan square in the chest and knocking him into the water.

The "good old days" of outdoor adventure are often defined in my mind by very specific images -- the shag carpet and felt curtains in our old camping van, Richard's blue early-model dome tent arching with a sharp wind in the west desert, Poppy's wise old smile as he cracks a joke by a campfire.

Sometimes they're expressed in sounds, like bacon frying, the leaves of a quaking aspen tinkling in the breeze, or a fish fighting as somebody -- usually not me -- pulls it from the water.

More often, however, those times are defined by random but meaningful moments, like the time I was sleeping in our van along the Mirror Lake Highway. I woke up sometime during the night, opened a window and spent at least an hour listening to the powerful Upper Provo River course down the canyon.

I recently watched an interview with a woman considered to be the only documented case of perfect recollection. She remembers every last second of her life, complete with accompanying emotions, since childhood. She described her mind as a split screen with the present playing on one side and every moment of her past playing over and over on the other side. When asked to share her observations on how regular people interpret memories, she said we tend to cling to pleasant and poignant bits while the mundane segments fade.

The good times of yore glow in my mind like the bulb of an old 8mm film projector -- flashing soft colors and cut-aways from memories -- highlights of the hikes and camps and fishing trips that inspired me to scour the classifieds for an old motor home to take my own boys camping in.

After an evening of exploring muddy trails, the boys stood reflectively by the fire, two of them on their second pair of pants for the night and all three on their second pair of socks. Most everybody else had gone to bed and the last of the flames disappeared into the embers. It was time to return to the old beast and call it a night.

"This is the funnest fathers and sons ever," declared 5-year-old Weston as I tucked him in. Two-year-old Coulter was gone the second he hit the pillow.

"Time for you to tell us a scary story, dad," said 6-year old Bridger. "But not too scary, OK?" he qualified. "Maybe a kind of spooky story that has a happy ending."

The coach smelled of mountain air and musty wood, and I hoped that clips from that evening would someday appear in their "good old days" reels.

Clint Thomsen is a Stansbury Park resident who grew up climbing mountains, wandering desert paths and exploring Utah's wilds. He may be contacted via his Web site at www.bonnevillemariner.com.