Thanks for more great reviews! Enjoy, especially all of you who have ever been to summer camp and know how amazing the memories are.

Chapter 4- Of Hockey Puck Hamburgers and Other Memories

Lorelai presses her forehead up against the window as they drive up the camp's lengthy private road. You can tell by the look on her face that it's all coming back to her, after all these years. They reach the small gravel parking lot next to the few main buildings, and all three jump out. Lorelai looks around her.

"I don't think this place has changed one bit." Rory smiles at her mom, and she and Luke give her a few minutes to bask in memories. When she finally shakes herself out of her reverie, she turns to face them. "Okay, well seeing as I'm the only one who's ever been here before, I have earned the right to be official tour guide, and as official tour guide I suggest we start with…" she looks around her, "the dining hall. Right this way my fine lady and gentlemen." They make their way along the gravel path to the large wooden building on the right of the parking lot. It occurs to Rory all of a sudden that what they are doing is probably trespassing.

"Mom, are we allowed to be here? Aren't all the buildings going to be locked or something?" Luke snorts a little and waits for Lorelai to get herself out of this one.

"Oh, my naïve little daughter, what are gawky, annoying pre-teen boys good at but figuring out ways to break into the dining hall for a little midnight snack? Your dad and his friends knew where they kept the spare key to this place the second night we were ever here." Rory flinches slightly at the mention of her dad, but then joins Luke in being thoroughly amused as they watch Lorelai walking heel-to-toe in front of one of the windows. She's watching her feet carefully.

"…Three, four…." She reaches up and feels along the upper ledge of the window until her hand meets metal. "Ah-ha! I remembered, I knew I did. First window to the right, four steps from the edge. I wonder if they realize just how many people knew, still know, how to break into this place." She smiles to herself. Luke looks a little stunned, but Rory is still having the nagging feeling that they're going to get caught.

"Mom, as impressive as your trespassing skills are, what if someone sees us?"

"Then we blame it all on Luke. Yeah, we say he abducted us and brought us here to be murdered. I can be very persuasive, and we could get away with it if you cried a little, got all dramatic." Lorelai says all this like it's the most natural thing in the world while also trying to get the key to turn in a lock that hasn't been used in a few weeks.

"Well at least now I know why you really invited me." Rory looks over at him sympathetically then, and Lorelai gets the door open with a flourish of dust and cobwebs. After some sneezing, and a little searching for the light switches, the large room brightens before their eyes.

"Could use a good dusting," Luke grumbles as he looks around at what, to him, is a large empty, dusty, wooden room with tables stacked against the walls. Nothing remarkable. To Lorelai, it's a cathedral- full of sacred memories of old friends and bad food. Rory is torn between the look of pure joy on her mother's face, and her actual thoughts on the place.

"Well, Ms. Tour Guide, do explain the scene before our eyes." Lorelai looks around her. Then walks over to a table in the corner.

"This table over here always had the coffee. It was only for counselors, of course, but I don't resent that, really, 'cause I learned the art of flirting to get what I want because of it." She bats her eyelashes at Luke, and he smiles a little, knowing she is referring to their daily coffee ritual. Does she really think we're flirting? Sometimes it's hard to tell. They continue around the dining hall, Lorelai getting more and more animated with each passing story.

"I remember the time they gave us cheese to put on our waffles at breakfast." She smiles; reminiscing. "We had a new cook, and she was clueless. Word of advice Luke; don't ever try to sell cheese waffles."

"Okay, don't think I will. Never would have occurred to me actually."

"Oooh, and one time, they gave us a very interesting concoction of pineapple and carrots at dinner."

"Oh, gross," Rory comments.

"It gets better," Lorelai grins at her daughter. "One time we had hamburgers that were cooked so long some of us actually went out and played hockey with the leftovers."

"Thank you for never sending me to camp. Did you ever have any food fights?"

"Oh, Rory what kind of a question is that? Do you really think that your mother would ever lower herself to participating in such a disgraceful thing as a food fight?" She feigns being offended and Rory rolls her eyes at her.

"I bet you didn't just participate, I bet you started it."

"Again, with the accusations."

"You're not denying them."

"Yes, well, that's because they are so scandalous they aren't even worthy of my response."

"Okay, whatever." They laugh their way through a few more ridiculous food stories, before realizing they are all rather hungry themselves. Rory goes out to get their picnic lunch from the truck while Luke and Lorelai un-stack a table and some benches for them to eat on. Luke, knowing them as well as he does, packed an insane amount of food, and he watches them eat for quite some time after he's finished.

"How can you two eat so much?"

"Isn't it obvious? It's all those summers of being deprived of real food. I only have the rest of my life to make up for it. And Rory, well, she's just weird."

"Hey." She hits her mom lightly on the arm, but laughs anyway. The two of them do eventually finish, though, and after locking up the dining hall and stashing the key again, Rory and Luke have no choice but to follow a very excited Lorelai down a twisty path toward the camp barn. They come out into a small clearing after a few minutes. To the left is a small stable with enough stalls to hold fifteen horses and to the right is a large, fenced in riding ring. The horses aren't there, but Lorelai doesn't seem to mind. She goes and stands in the middle of one of the stalls.

"Mom, what are you doing?" I don't know if I really want to know.

"This- was Sam's stall. Oh, he was my favorite horse here. He was old. And fat. And grumpy. But he always behaved for me. Man, I spent hours in this stall every summer. I'd bring him carrots or something and then just sit and talk to him. He was a very good listener. Sam was the reason I've always loved horses. And for some reason- I always got the feeling that he was British. Hmmm." Luke and Rory exchange amused glances at this and Lorelai turns on the spot, taking in the entire stall before wandering down the row of them. "There was Daisy, Jack, Rasberry. Oh, and crazy Cricket. Fell off of him many a time. I was very graceful back then." She's not paying attention to where she's walking, and she trips right on cue.

"Still are, I see." Luke smiles and helps steady her on her feet again.

"Yes, well what is Mom if not very well poised?" She grins somewhat mischievously- both at her comment and at the look on her mom's face when Luke caught her. Lorelai gives her a half-hearted glare, but she is still a little ruffled from the unexpected feel of Luke's hands on her arms. She wanders the rest of the barn in silence, but gets excited all over again at the prospect of seeing the cabins. They pass the lake on their way, and Lorelai reenacts, very theatrically and on dry land of course, the infamous day that Digger flipped over their canoe. She has Rory in stitches and even Luke can't help but smile at the thought of Lorelai dumped out of a canoe.

"To this day I swear he did it on purpose, but he'd never admit it." She sighs. "It's so pretty here though, isn't it? With the trees and everything. I used to come down her almost every night to watch the sunset. It just made me feel like everything in the world was right, ya know? Like I had all of summer stretched out in front of me and nothing could go wrong." She puts an arm around Rory who's trying her hardest to see what her mom sees in this place. They all stand and gaze out over the water for a few minutes. Rory shifts her weight a little, and Lorelai realizes she's probably boring them.

"My, my, my- I have been neglecting my duties as tour guide. Up next on your right will be some of the many residential cabins located at Camp Indian Hill. I, Lorelai Gilmore, was a proud tenant of Cabin Powhatan most of my summers here." They turn the corner, and she points to a medium sized cabin halfway up the hill in front of them.

"Aww, Mom, it's so cute. Straight out of a movie."

"What movie?"

"I don't know… a movie about summer camp."

"Are their any movies about summer camp?"

"Probably."

"Well, I've never seen any."

"Well, if there was a movie about summer camp, that cabin would be in it."

"Let's just go see the cabin please." Luke, quite frankly, doesn't care if there are any movies about summer camp. They walk up to Cabin Powhatan and peer in the windows. The door is locked, so they can't go in. Despite Lorelai's expert break-and-enter skills, the gang never did have a reason to find the spare keys to the cabins.

"Yes, it was a good little cabin. Cozy and comfortable. Though it didn't have enough closet space for all my shoes." Rory giggles to find that her mom's love of shoes has spanned her entire life. "And that about raps up your tour. They do have sports fields somewhere around her, but I never set foot on them then, and I really don't care to see them now."

"Okay, then I guess we should be getting back. We can stop for dinner on the way."

"Sounds like a plan." Lorelai turns to lead the way back to the truck. They walk in silence. Lorelai is still lost in her own memories, and Rory is thinking about how her mom might complain about the bugs and the bad food, but camp meant more to her than she'd ever admit. Luke ponders the fact that he had a better time than he'd expected. Rory yawns as they climb back into the truck, even though it's still early. Lorelai is about to close the door when she stops.

"Hey, wait. There's one more think I want to show Rory. Luke, could you just hold on a sec?" She doesn't wait for his answer, but pulls Rory out after her and walks a little ways into the woods next to the dining hall. She looks around a little bit, then spots what she's searching for.

"Look, hun." A few feet up a fat, old oak tree are the initials CH and LG carved inside of a rather lopsided heart. "We did that the last night we were here. I'm sorry you're dad couldn't come, babe." She hugs Rory.

"It's alright Mom; really, you don't have to apologize for him. Besides, Luke was a more than adequate substitute." She wipes the beginnings of tears out of her eyes, then smiles. "Can I ask you a question though?"

"Sure. Anything."

"Why are your initials so much more crooked than dad's?" Lorelai laughs.

"Well, me being the independent woman that I am, I insisted on carving my own initials. Of course, my woodworking skills are a little iffy, so that was the result." She points to the LG. "After my astonishing success, your dad made me carve the heart to redeem myself, but I failed horribly." They both giggle as they look back at the crooked heart surrounding the letters. After a few more seconds, "Come on kid, Luke's waiting." They get back in the truck with an annoyed, but understanding, Luke. When he notices that Rory's been crying he looks at Lorelai who silently mouths "She's fine" over Rory's head. With that, she once again leans against the window to silently say her goodbyes to Camp Indian Hill as they make their way back to civilization.

I'm thinking maybe one more chapter to go- dinner and the rest of the ride home. I'm going away for three weeks, so I gotta rap this up. Oh, and by the way, all of those food stories at the beginning of the chapter- all taken from real mealtime experiences I had at camp.