On never actually getting away from it all.

As you know, we're a couple of weeks away from the camping trip proper. While we get broadish hints that it's not going to go well because Lynn needs to mock Alan's prowess as a canoeist out of jealousy, spite, malice and jealousy, it behooves us all to notice the real reason that the trip is a bad thing that sort of backfired on them that doesn't have to do with the fact that Phil is the same kind of stupid woodsman that John is. As you will recall, nitwit John was too proud and stupid to phone Ted and ask where the cabin was and he and Elly decided for various reasons that an abandoned shack was his 'little place'; since they didn't explain where they were supposed to be, no one told them that Ted's place was a lot nicer. This tendency to not explain where they're going is pretty much why he and Phil get lost and why it takes more time than it should have to find them.

That being said, active male stupidity is not why the trip is a horrible idea that they're being punished for by spending a night shivering on a barren rock. The passive male stupidity that wrecked the previous camping trips for Elly is why trips to the woods are a bad thing. As I've said before when this came up, John and the kids have a nice time playing around in the woods while Elly gets stuck slaving away at the camp stove and picking up after heedless, unappreciative idiots who think that she secretly loves to waste her life playing maid. She likes to relax too so it bothers her that she doesn't get her own chance to enjoy the woods. In her mind, camping would be a damned sight more enjoyable if it were catered.