Perpetual Ruminations

Camping 2023, A Journey Back

Although this is our first camping trip of the current season, I should travel a short distance back in time before I tackle the present. My wife and I have enjoyed camping since we first met back in 2002 and survived our first camp-out early that spring. This is an interesting story, and I plan on writing about it one day, but that's not today.

It's enough, for now, to know we started out camping in a tent with my dog, and over time graduated to a larger tent and two dogs. As time passed, our simple camping gear increased, another dog joined us, and our enjoyment increased. We would travel to various parks and pitch our tent and screen tent, which we added for a lace to cook and hang out when inclement weather would strike. We would do a lot of hiking and were considering adding a canoe.

Some friends had kayaks and advised us against a canoe since two Golden Retrievers would be very challenging and said we would enjoy kayaks more. We tried theirs out while camping with them, and we were hooked, so we added kayaking to our adventures. With longer caping trips we needed more food along, more space for gear, and a lot of ice for coolers, so we invested in a small refrigerator that we would set up in the screen tent, which was now our kitchen, we also upgraded our six man tent to a cabin tent that I could stand up in, had two separate rooms if desired, a closet, and an actual door instead of two flaps. In time my back problems began to make it difficult to get up off the ground in the mornings, so we invested in a folding camp bed that we could fold up and take with us.

With all this added gear, we needed a bigger vehicle to pack it all in, so we invested in a pickup with a topper on it, installed kayak racks on it, and were all set. Well, until we adopted two grandchildren. At first, we did all right but needed even more food and soda for them, two more kayaks, and eventually our old tent, which was in terrific shape yet, for them. We now found that the pickup did not provide enough room for all our gear, four people, and one dog (our Golden's had departed but we had another dog at this time). So, we found ourselves driving both the pickup and the car anytime we went camping and also discovered that some of the parks (most of them) required us to have two camping spaces for two tents and a screen tent.

Things were getting more difficult and we would be up early, spend a few hours packing up gear, drive to our sites, and then spend hours unpacking and setting up. At the end of the trip, we would start packing things up the night before, then spend a few hours the last day trying to get everything back into the vehicles, drive home, unpack anything that couldn't be left in the vehicles, and then spend a few hours the following day putting everything away.

Since tent camping was getting to be more work than fun, and since the two girls didn't really enjoy camping very much, we decided to save up and purchase a camper. My wife and I still loved camping in a tent and spent a great deal of time deciding on what kind of camper we wanted, hardshell or tent-camper. In the end, we did not want to give up sleeping in a tent but needed the convenience of a camper, so we purchased a pop-up camper. The price was terrific, but it did need some work; nothing major, just little fixes I could do myself. This was perfect since the two kids we now had did not have the capacity to take care of anything; given if they messed something up we wouldn't feel we wasted a lot of money.

I spent most of last summer fixing it up and getting everything ready, and by fall we finally got to use it. It was so much easier, more enjoyable for all, and provided us with two wonderful adventures before the weather became too cold to go out. The only drawbacks were, it was cold out at night and we did not have access to power at the campground we went to (they were doing work and had shut down water and power to most of the camp). But, we did have battery power and a gas furnace, so we managed. The other problem was, space was limited in the camper, and the two girls needed to bring way too much stuff. Even so, we had a great time, made lasting memories, and still got to sleep in a tent that was heated, had running hot and cold water, and lights (no bathroom), but we were parked close to a vault toilet (no water for the showers or modern facilities).

Now back to the present which I will add in another entry soon~