Camping!

[saechalyn]

I don't care...it feels gross when I don't.

[lullaby1031]

We had a blast - the guys drank from morning till night and I had fun laughing at their expense lol Nothings more funny then a guy losin his shorts while havin a Midnight swim and havin to run back to the site! We got rained out on the 2nd night, but it was cool cuz we hooked the tarp up to the mini van and made a little fake cover out of it so we'd adleast have a dry place to hang out and listen to some tunes without having to retreat to our tents. We had no running water so we used the water spout from the cooler to wash our hands and used the lake for staying a bit clean - First thing I did when I got back was took a long hot shower. I got some pics and I'll share as soon as their developed. It was so beautiful! :grin I'll never forget the campfire stories this Native guy was tellin us all weekend - Man it was great!

[Homicidalheathen]

My campout this weekend went kinda bust. Too many mesquitos and alcohol...eh hem.

WE got rained on a little not too bad but there was some lightening.

We left eary because there was no one there I wanted to uh....uh....well lets just say we left early. LOL

[Fierce Critter]

OMG - long Critter post ahead! Fair warning!

I LOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOVE camping. My parents took us up north every summer from before I can remember until I was a teenager. I never knew what the inside of a hotel room looked like 'cause we always stayed in a camper or cabin of some sort.

Some of our favorite places to go were the Au Sable river in northcentral Michigan, a campground in a town called Grawn about 6 miles outside of Traverse City (upper pinky area ), Gaylord (home of the "Call of the Wild" museum); the U.P., etc.

We had a pop-up camper we'd take, and mostly stay in State Park campgrounds. Finally, my dad sold the pop-up and we didn't go for years, until he bought a self-contained (with bathroom) 22-foot camper and parked it for good in the Grawn campground. Then, we'd spend a couple weeks up there every summer.

I started going up there by myself twice a year from 1990 through 1997. It was like a personal retreat that re-energized me for the rest of the year.

When my husband and I got married in October, 1998, we were going to live in that camper in that campground during the winter, while getting jobs and saving for the down-payment on an apartment. Once they turned off the water, however, it ended up being too much to deal with (only 22' of space, using a big coffee urn for hot water & running from the car to the bath house in the frigid air to take a shower, etc.), so we bailed. My dad sold the camper shortly after that, and it was a very sad day for me.

Jon introduced me to tent camping shortly after we met in early 1998. I admit, I was a bit spoiled by the pop-ups, cabins & self-contained "mansion on wheels", so it took some getting used to. But now I love it. We use an inflatable air mattress so our backs don't kill us, and have a newer tent that pops-up practically by itself in minutes. There's nothing like seeing the stars through the mosquito netting "skylight" up top, and being sung to sleep by a choir of crickets & frogs.

The ONLY thing I hate about tenting is the fact that I need to pee almost every night. Getting in and out of a tent and walking to a pit toilet or bath house is a pain in the ass. I don't want to deal with toting around a porta potty, but I might have to learn to use a Porta Jane.

We spent a lot of our first couple years together taking trips up north and tenting all over the place. Some of our favorite places were the State Park Campground on Lake Michigan (tip of the Lelanau Peninsula), Taquahmenon Falls campground (U.P.), Holiday Park (Grawn, outside of Interlochen & Traverse City), Interlochen State Park Campground (Interlochen). But our very favorite is a motorcycler's campground outside of Interlochen. You might think it's full of loud, boistrous bikers & loud bikes, but that couldn't be further from the truth. It's the quietest, cleanest campground we ever stayed in. Their bathhouse is the cleanest, best-kept of all of them, and the prices can't be beat.

We moved from Michigan to Florida a couple times our first year together. We stayed in campgrounds rather than motels some of those trips. Saved a ton of money.

We haven't been camping since moving down here. There are too many really big, scary spiders on the ground here for me to be able to deal with it. It's just too different. I mourn the camping trips we could have been taking in beautiful, northern Michigan.

If you want to know what I see are the pros and cons of the different types of camping:

Cabins - spacious, convenient, no set-up required, don't have to bring your own dwelling, better for those who are used to motels, bug-free if well maintained. Cons: tend to be expensive, often need reservations well in advance, badly maintained cabins allow for lots of mosquitos to enter at will.

Self-Contained campers - spacious (depending on model), bathroom at your disposal, electricity at your disposal (dependent on campground), kitchen within, comfy sleeping arrangements, insect-free. Cons: expensive, have to be well-maintained to be portable, need larger vehicle for towing, storage fees if left at campgrounds annually, require staying at campgrounds that have sewer services (more expensive), tend to encourage "spoiled" attitude toward "real roughing-it".

Pop-up camper - very portable, broad range of styles for many budgets, new ones are easy to set-up, can be used at just about all kinds of campgrounds, insect-free, comfortable, some have built-in kitchen appliances, insect free best of both worlds. Cons: I'll never forget my mother's fear that some wacko with a knife could "cut right through" it while we sleep (thanks for the paranoia, Ma), need to be maintained well to avoid deterioration or mildewy smell, does require some set-up. (Overall the optimal camping situation for some)

Tenting - true "one with nature" experience, probably largest availability of camping areas (can even pitch it in the middle of state forests often), least expensive, has become easier to set-up due to new advances in designs, hell of a place to make love . Cons - no bathrooms (have to learn to do it bear-style, or pitch it near a pit toilet or bath house, or learn to use a porta-john or porta-jane), can be very scary in stormy weather, if not put in a good, well-prepared spot can result in uncomfortable flooring (sticks, rocks, hard ground) or flooding from runoff, not adviseable if you can't deal without running water & indoor plumbing.