Oh To Be Camping

For many years, of my favorite outdoor activities has involved camping. This never ceases to surprise my friends who tend to think of me as a high-maintenance, electronic-dependent, pampered diva. Last year, as a matter of fact, I threw quite a few of my readers on Electric Venom for a loop when I announced my family was going on a three week camping trip. I do believe they began placing bets on just how long before I raced back home to my creature comforts.

Truth is, some of my fondest childhood memories involve camping and hiking trips, although my parents were the type who believed “roughing it” meant sleeping 6 in a 4-person RV. Now that I’m the parent, I’m made of much sterner stuff… much to my family’s annoyance.

Until I became a parent I considered a tent to be purely optional camping equipment. I was the kind who believed that camping did not involve pulling up to a nice, paved parking space in the midst of a national park and unloading the trunk. The way parks are so crowded these days, you might as well sleep in your front yard and call that camping. Bathrooms? Why, they were behind every tree… just be careful which leaves you used, if you know what I mean.

Ironically, my husband and son (who seem to prefer living in squalor indoors) consider my notion of camping to be a bit too primitive. They expect a tent, and preferably an expansive one. They don’t want to schlep supplies more than a couple of yards from the car, and bathrooms? Well, my husband makes sure our site is just a hop down a paved road from one.

Wimp.

I’ve finally convinced my husband that we need to take a real camping trip. One that involves hiking and an actual experience of nature beyond the great gray expanse of asphalt that most National Park camping sites have become.

I, personally, would love to do a Rocky Mountain backpacking trip, perhaps near Colorado’s majestic Fourteener’s. I waited a bit too long to suggest it for this year, but we’re giving serious thought to a trip next Spring, right as the temperatures start warming up again. Talk about a perfect way to spend a Spring Break: not only would we get away from it all, but I’d get plenty of exercise, too!