I spent YEARS also saying I was just not a camper. I'm still not entirely sure how the change came about. Well, I guess I do kind of know. Chiefly, I had kids, and I would take the kids and hang out with our camping friends and then retreat to a hotel room at night. The kids loved camping, and the getting to the hotel room became such a pain in the ass that we decided we might as well try actual camping. My husband is practically a professional camper, having spent years camp counselling and canoe tripping as a teenager, so in all honesty I don't do the majority of the work either. And I love my friends, and my friends, for some reason, love camping.
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I am very nearly too old for this camping shit, probably. And yet, and yet....I know I need to be pushed out of my comfort zone periodically because my comfort zone, she is not big.
There is something very gratifying about producing a meal for twenty and having it go well, and then not having to make dinner for the rest of the trip.
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There is something satisfying about getting up and making two sandwiches for the beach bag and going to the beach with nineteen of your closest friends and their children.
Chips eaten while camping don't count.
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| Snack photo gallery |
I have a double-height air mattress now, which makes it possible to get up in the morning (or the middle of the night to pee) without completely abandoning all pretense of dignity.
There is something really special about a campfire.
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| Photo credit Matthew's girlfriend Jessica, whose last name I forget |
When I get home I REALLY appreciate flush toilets and showers being less than 500 meters away.
The campground we've gone to for the past decade is three hours away, but has the most spectacular beach in the province. It's always hard to get enough sites, but we've always managed somehow. This year they closed an entire campground to upgrade the facilities, and since everybody's kids want to come now, we practically NEED an entire campground. So we were temporarily flummoxed, until Margot suggested a provincial Park an hour and a half away - the beach wasn't as nice, but we could get a bunch of sites really close together (usually impossible at Sandbanks) and all sites were electrical, which is pure luxury.
We did miss the beach, but everything else was pretty much as nice or nicer. I was perhaps disproportionately enchanted by the water taps, which, at Sandbanks, are set in sand which quickly becomes mud, and you have to put your container on the ground and then bend down to pick it up (and water is HEAVY). Here there was a lovely wooden platform, and it was all set in gravel. I was ridiculously delighted every time I got water.
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| A thing of freaking beauty, if you ask me |
The comfort stations were nicer and cleaner, and the toilets were automatic flush, which is so smart, because at most places people don't want to touch the flush handle so they use their feet and it damaged the mechanism (I know, I KNOW, people are savages, but this is the obvious solution). It's almost like Sandbanks knows everyone wants their beach, and they slack on everything else as a result.
The fact that we were only ninety minutes from home was also extremely beneficial when, on Sunday, it became clear that waiting out the rain was no longer a viable option. We chucked everything that wasn't a tent in our cars, drove home, had our group dinner at Mark and Collette's, showered, slept in our own beds, then headed back the next day. We went in the morning, which seemed questionable to me because it was supposed to keep raining until 8 p.m., but you know, I love my friends, it's good to be uncomfortable sometimes, etc. etc. As it turned out, the rain stopped right as we got there. We dumped the water out of the tents and threw them open to the sun, dried out the air mattresses on top of our car, had a great day and great campfire, and a perfect beach day the next day. Sometimes blind faith is rewarded?
10 comments:
You make it all sound so fun and charming! (I remain suspicious.)
I also remain suspicious! I'm not a camping person. BUT, I guess if I had friends who all wanted to do it, and my husband was willing to do the work of putting up the tent (and whatever else is required... building the fire?) I would consider it. I know you always have a good time, and the beach does sound nice!
First things first: I Looooove the snack photo gallery.
Agree with the others that your account of this trip makes it sound glorious and yet I too remain suspicious.
I was raised to be a tent camper but in my adulthood I discovered just how much damn work it is to go camping with small kids and so after that one trip at the end of which we were eaten alive by mosquitos in an otherwise lovely park in PA, we left it up to the Scouts and the Uncles to take my kids camping. Now that they are adults, they no longer go camping either.
I think God made a cruel joke on humanity by making water so heavy. The history of the world, or at least the history of camping, would be so different if water were lighter to carry.
I normally feel completely comfortable with my "I DO NOT CAMP" concept---except when you post about it and make it seem not only possible but appealing.
I will go cabin camping (Maryland state parks have these cabins with no water or electricity but beds), but I haven't done even that in a long time. Beth took the kids camping (usually one at a time, sometimes both at once) a couple times a year when they were younger, but we've never gone in a big group like that.
When I camped as a child with my family we had a trailer - a small one, but still, there was an 'inside'. One of our families used to have her dad's huge fancy trailer, and when he sold it they bought a tent - I was vastly impressed, I don't think I would have been able to go back.
Probably best to just lie down until that feeling passes lol.
So valid, Suzanne.
Yeah, our friends started when their kids were really small - I wanted no part of that nonsense. I was a high-strung enough mother under a roof with uninterrupted access to hot running water.
My husband does also build the fire, yes. I do most of the prep work at home, and it is a giant pain in the ass. It is always just enjoyable enough (or I've forgotten enough) that I agree to do it again the next year.
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