John Simons

Camping

So, what does camping mean to you? I went camping this past weekend, and am surprised at the variety of what people consider camping.

Now mind you, I believe in camping on a budget. Except of course for the fact that in the chaos of packing the car, and getting the kids to let go of me long enough to get anything packed, I managed to forget my pillow. Any my sleeping bag. And several other things that I needed for the weekend. So I had to stop at Target on the way to the campsite to get all the things that I forgot. So much for camping on a budget. But, I digress.

So, Friday night, I walked around the campsite, and was amazed at the variety of setups. First off, there are several people set up about like I was. One tent, one car, pretty simple. Another site was a little more advanced: one tent, but with a screened room set up for them to cook and eat in, without sharing space with all the mosquitoes. Next on the hierarchy were those sites that had a basic pop-up camper that was towed behind a truck. These weren’t much fancy, but they have to be more comfortable, and quicker to set up than a tent. Finally, there were the fifth wheels and full-on RV’s that have all the amenities of life at home. We are talking about kitchens, air conditioning, even satellite TV. Yes, you can leave home and go camping, without leaving any of the comforts of home behind. It kind of makes you wonder why they left home in the first place.

We Americans like our luxuries, and are hard pressed when it comes to doing without.

We don’t seem to like bugs much either. Saturday night after dinner, I went and cleaned my dishes at the sink by the laundry area. There were lots of flying insects, including thousands of mosquitoes flying around. Luckily, the DEET that I had used kept most of them off me. I came back through a little while later to find a man emptying an entire aerosol can of bug spray (it happened to be ant spray) into the laundry area. The first thing I thought was — Wow that can’t be good for his lungs. He was spraying so much, that he looked to be in the middle of a cloud of the stuff. But then, he called me over to show me how many mosquitoes he had killed - a lot. We then commented about the hundreds more that were still flying in and around the lights. He kept spraying more of the bug spray, and bragging about all the mosquitoes he had killed. I eventually wandered off to my tent to call it a day.

1 Comment to Camping

1. [...] / Now Random thoughts in the here and now. « Camping New Blog [...]
Here / Now » Blog Archive » Retreat of Silence (ROS) on September 27th, 2007

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