This is the summer of the camping trip. We have a whopping FOUR
trips planned, which is a couple more than normal. We're usually down
for 2 definite camping trips and sometimes slip a 3rd into the mix
somewhere, but scheduling purposes have allowed and encouraged four
trips to happen.
And folks, we are tent campers. Also, the boy and I are solidly in our 30s and THIS IS NO JOKE anymore.
Case
in point: As I lay on my bedding situation Sunday night at
approximately 1:36 AM (not approximate at all, mind you...I was still
trying to fall asleep and had just looked at the time after trudging to
the bathrooms twice which is not common to my current life
situation & nothing wakes you up more than coming face-to-face with a
campground-fat raccoon), I wondered A) how is it that we went from
blithely sleeping on grounds/floors/hard surfaces to
these-hips-don't-lie in a matter of a mere decade, and B) how do people
do it on the regular on legit hiking trips? Props and claps and all the
nods to them.
I don't know if you've
noticed, but this spring has been 178% saturated. Nary a day has passed
in the last 24 weeks (give or take a couple) that hasn't included
either threatening or downpouring skies. I know we're just wallowing in
our inconvenience here, but this family is over it. We have been
inside more and crabbier. We. Need. Sun.
And
like any fully technologized person of 2019, we obsessively followed
the radar for seemingly by the minute updates on whether or not it would
dump buckets on us SLASH throw more severe storms at us. It turns out
that the correct answer here is both "neither" and "yes." There was
rain, it turns out, but it was always conveniently located and the dense
foliage basically kept us happily comfortable. There were severe
storms but only as figments of our radar's imagination as they kept
magically breaking up. So, around the witching hour (the one where our
children turn into ravenous, impatient little people who must be attended to right now or else they will become banshees),
we faced a decision: There was a (literal) room at the inn and we had
the chance to grab it as insurance from those promised and threatening
severe storms but we had to make that decision imediamente.
We paid the $130 insurance policy.
There were also no subsequent storms.
It was a beautiful night for camping.
Oh, the joy that nestled in my heart.
The
boy and I were on a camping trip with siblings 11 years ago that was
the opposite of this experience. During ye olden era of 2008, none of
us had smart anything or tuned into anything resembling THE WEATHER
FORECAST. Here's what our rationale for the trip likely entailed: It
is summer. Summer is hot. Today is sunny. Today is a sunny, hot,
summer day.
Did you know that sunny, hot summer days can also (freakishly) turn into scary, turbulent, stormy summer nights? True enough.
That
trip resulted in leaking tents, scary lightening, high winds, a mad
scramble for a hotel room that could house 6 people sometime in the
midnight-2 AM range, a wallet left out on a picnic table, and a brand
new turned ruined canopy.
It seemed like the
prudent idea to grab the room at the inn and not challenge the camping
gods again. And I did get to sleep in a bed instead that night. But
still.
IF we had the space and IF we
had a few extra grand (can we talk about a new shed and a new roof and
new
flooring-that-costs-more-than-the-roof-because-the-previous-owners-installed-it-wrong),
we would probably be looking for something like this:
Because nothing says "riding out the storms at the campground" like a vintage 1970 Shasta camper.
(It's actually pretty sweet inside.)
It has to be an upgrade over sleeping on dirt and tree roots.
