http://www.cnn.com/2009/TRAVEL/03/26/camping.economy/index.html
My family was one of those "nerdy families" that went camping back in the day. We had the whole setup. 3-room tent. Coleman lanterns and stove. Cots. Army surplus sleeping bags. Blue & white speckled coffee percolator. To this day I have a fondness for toast made over an open flame.
I have good memories of camping and bad. Good like getting to ramble all day in the woods. Bad like swimming underwater in a lake and getting the life scared out of me because I thought I saw an alligator (algae covered log). Good like being under no obligation to bathe. Bad like a 5-day camping trip in which it rained 4 days, and by the last day when the sun finally came out, every pieced of clothing I owned was soaking wet except for a pair of tube socks and I had to wear my mom's t-shirt and wrap shorts (actually the wrap shorts were cool, so that story is only half bad). Good like coming home, and a few weeks later finding a shirt that hadn't been washed that still smelled like camp fire. Bad like watching my parents fight for the fiftydozenth time about how the tent goes together. Obviously my spooky ability to put things together is a recessive genetic trait. Good like rainbow colored Jiffy Pop over the campfire. And nothing bad can really ever happen if you have Jiffy Pop.
Actually, all those years of camping were good training for life. Be prepared. If your perfectly toasted marshmallow falls off, you can always make another. Always pack extra socks. Never open your eyes underwater in a lake. Kids can be amused indefinitely by a good pair of walkie talkies and a supply of batteries. And good always tastes better around a campfire.
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4 comments:
Food DOES taste better outside - don't know why. My family went camping but roughed in more - no cots for sure! I mostly hated it in my memory, but I'm sure as a tot I loved it - some comedian compared it to "white folks going on vacation to pretend they are poor" - um, yeah. I'll save my camping for when I "have to" aka the End of Days...
I've actually done it as an adult, and found that it's still fun. I find the key to be keeping it short. 3 days max. Any more and the "isn't this fun?" turns into "what fresh hell is this?"
Also it's good practice for that Mad Max future we seem to be heading towards.
I only camped once with my parents and the other family we were with had a pop-up trailer, which is where I slept. My dad slept outside in a fold-out beach chair and heard a raccoon in the middle of the night. My quick-thinking dad grabbed the hose to scare the critter and when he turned on the spray nozzle, hit himself squarely in the face with a cold blast of water. He had the nozzle pointing the wrong way!
I camped a lot with the girl scouts and always had a blast (even when I was frozen or wet or both). Good times.
The only bad thing was worrying about ticks and having to do "tick checks" several times a day. I hate ticks.
Ticks are BAD. I lived in fear of them my entire childhood, but never actually had one. Chiggers do love me though.
I had a friend who camped in a popup in southern Arizona. She woke up one night because her husband was rolling around and bumping into her. Then she realized that her husband was sleeping in the other twin bed on the other side of the camper. It was the popup side that was bumping her. Oh, yeah. Bear. She grabbed her hubby's arm and rolled them both into the floor. It took almost 10 minutes for the bear to wander away. Sue spent the rest of their trip sleeping in the truck.
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