We love the outdoors. Since before we were a "we", H and I and have been camping. As kids he did it with his family and I did it with mine. And in the forty-plus years of marriage, we have had a whole host of camping equipment and RV's.
We tent camped through the Olympic Peninsula for our honeymoon. Shortly after that, H bought a small non cab-over slide in camper for his '64 Dodge pickup that we called Buford. It served us well on our trip through the Northern Cascades.
Not too much later, we were offered the chance to buy someone's GMC pickup with a full-size slide in camper. So we sold Buford and the little camper to our friend, Bruce, and bought the bigger outfit. That worked great for lots of trips, including Disneyland and Lake Shasta.
Then the baby came. Our 9 1/2 foot camper suddenly got really small. By the time the twins came along, we knew we weren't going anywhere for awhile.
But when the twins were about three, we found a USED tent-trailer and thought we'd try it. I made new cushions and curtains for it and we ventured out. We had such a good time, we decided a few years later to buy a brand new tent-trailer and sold the old one to our neighbors.
As the kids got older, everyone decided we needed a boat more than we needed the tent-trailer. Back to the tent we went.
Then in 1997, we found ourselves between businesses. So we bought a 32' Pace Arrow motorhome, loaded up a 16 year-old and two 13 year-olds, and headed out to tour the United States for the summer. We got home right before Band Camp started, put the motorhome away, and said that if we didn't use it in 6 months, we'd sell it.
We sold the motorhome the following February. It's amazing how busy three teenagers can be! The boys and their dad were camping quite often with the Boy Scouts. And while they were out, my daughter and I preferred to "camp" at the HIlton.
As the nest started to empty, H and I went back to tent camping. And we LOVED it. We saw lots of National Parks, including the Grand Canyon, Bryce Canyon, and Glacier. In the span of eighteen years, we wore out more than one tent.
But it was during our trip to Yosemite in 2014 that I announced I was through with the tent. H says it happened the day we woke up with frost on the inside of the tent. I think it happened after two weeks of sleeping like a hot dog in a leaky air mattress, and having to deal with a filthy, pitch-black restroom that had no electricity.
So now we have a trailer with a great bed and a bathroom that we can keep clean. I hesitate to call what we do camping. It's really more like glamping (glamorous camping). But we still get to be out in some pretty fabulous places. And you know what they say: when Mama's happy...
 |
| Plumas-Eureka State Park, CA |
Comments