Happy Campers

There is no better way to spend a brisk fall evening than sitting with friends and family around a crackling campfire.  There’s an intimacy and a certain magic to it.  The world outside of the fire’s orange glow seems to disappear. The smell of the smoke engages the part of an overworked brain that triggers an urge to tell embarrassing stories and laugh at people whom, in normal circumstances, are just not that funny.

I love this scenario.  I often paint the scene in my mind, sitting at my desk when office life gets too stressful.  I guess it’s my “happy place”.  I can’t pinpoint when the first time was that I experienced camping and the campfire, but whenever it was it made an impression on me.

I didn’t camp outdoors much as a kid.  Once in a blue moon my Dad would begrudgingly drag out the old canvas tent and set it up in the backyard for a birthday or summer weekend, most of the camping was of the “blanket over stacked couch cushions” kind.  I would imagine I was deep in the wilderness and able to survive with nothing but my keen survival skills and a small plastic bag of peanut butter crackers. 

I wasn’t a cub scout either.  I didn’t need to be.  I had seemingly endless woods to explore all around my house and parents who were brave enough to let me take Spike, the mutt and a backpack of full of army surplus out for hours at a time.  I learned to fish in the local farmer’s ponds.  I learned to hike on deer trails and learned to hunt with a Daisy single pump BB gun.  The only patches I earned were the ones sewn on the knees of my jeans or the old army ones I begged my Mom to sew everywhere else.

I was lucky enough to fall in with a cheerful band of outdoor pirates / mountain bikers in college and really fed my camping bug.  We often stayed out at the fire until the sun came up, the wood ran out or the bottles were all empty.  Being out in the woods was just what you did when classes were done for the week and the snow wasn’t flying.  The rest of the winter was spent anticipating the first trip of spring.  It was a great way to pick up chicks too.  Cool girls like dirt, that brings me to my next stage of camping.

My wife grew up camping with her family in a pop-up.  She has lots of memories of setting the camper up, playing around the campsite and of course time around the campfire with her family and church groups and friends.  When we started dating it was the dead of winter, so I had to wait until that spring to put her to the test.  That first camping trip with her was great, and really helped seal the deal.  She was beautiful, strong-willed AND loved the outdoors.  Definitely a keeper.  We spent most of our time off over the next few years camping either in Michigan, Northeast Ohio or around the Lake Erie Islands.  We even tried a spring trip to Colorado and found that camping in the mountains in March in Northern Colorado is not quite the experience we expected. 

Once our kids came along we continued to camp fairly often, but it did mean we had to make some changes.  First we invested in a bigger tent, then better equipment, then cots.  It started to feel like we were gypsies moving a caravan from town to town and less like we were escaping the stress of stuff to get out into nature.  We were just bogged down with baby baggage.  Suddenly now instead of a tent and sleeping bags with a few key tools we had to pack cots and cribs and toys and a heater and a fan and diapers and clothes and an extra cooler of the juice and the milk and the baby food.  We used to be able to pack everything in the trunk of my small convertible and head out for a week, now we were completely loading an SUV, including a car-top carrier for an overnight stay.  It was nuts.

The last few years we camped a total of 3 times.  It was sad.

Then we realized that perhaps it was time to consider that we didn’t have to “rough it” to get back out in the woods.  We started noticing pop-up campers.  We started getting online and researching pop-up campers.  Finally last spring we went out and bought our pop-up camper.

Our pop-up, set up for the first time at "Camp Grandpa"

It has all of the necessities that make camping with kids possible, without the luxuries that make you feel guilty about it.  There are comfortable beds, there is no bathroom.  There is storage for all of the stuff, but there is no furnace.  It has a small gas stove, but no air conditioning.  It is the perfect compromise.  Even with the unbearably hot summer we had this year and the ever increasing demands at work, we still managed to get out and camp 5 times so far, and fall has just begun.  I am excited again about getting out and camping.  I love that when I grab my hat and put it on it smells like a campfire again.  Granted, the bottles are full of baby formula now and not tequila and I usually get woken up at the crack of dawn by my little men instead of sleeping in, it’s still camping, and I am loving every minute of it!