I grew up camping. All over the place. Wisconsin, Wyoming, we’d pile all the cousins in a truck and drive until we found a good spot to pitch a tent and build a fire and catch some fish. Naturally, now, I do not camp. The only outdoors I do is a ride on the bike trail through the park by my home.
Do you like the outdoors, or are you a city mouse?
A.
I have always like the outdoors, the open air, nature, etc. But, as I get older I find I like a nice soft warm bed a lot more. So, I haven’t camped out for several years, and have no plans to change that. I don’t even do my long solo walks in the woods anymore – plantar fasciitus takes care of that.
The mere idea of camping makes me break out in hives. Give me concrete and glass and I’m happy. Seriously, even Central Park it too outdoors for me.
We do this all summer long. Try to spend 2 weeks every summer in the Sawtooth Recreation area, right on the edge of the Frank Church River of No Return Wilderness – some of the most beautiful country you will ever see. Of course, we do that with a travel trailer, so I have a bed, and a fridge and it really isn’t that much roughing it.
We do the tent camping as well, because it is easy to throw stuff in the trunk and just go for a couple of days.
Didn’t do this much as a kid, but it is Mr. L’s fav thing, so he introduced me to it, and now it is just the norm – we’re looking at going next weekend, for spring break.
I’m a city boy. My father was in WW II and slept on the ground or in a tent for several years and swore he’d never do so again. I went camping once and wasn’t crazy about it.
I like nature but would rather sleep in a hotel nearby than camp. Anything but camp.
My last camping trip was at least 15 years ago, for a week in the Chiricahuas. It was a great trip, and going to sleep to the lullabyes of the Mexican Whip-poor-wills, and waking up to the croaks of the Elegant Trogons who were nesting only a hundred yards or so up the creekbed from our tent are memories I’ll have forever. My appreciation for nature has never waned, but in my effete old age I’ve come also to appreciate a hot shower and a comfortable bed after a long day of critterizing.
I’m a city girl, but I just loved hiking and camping in northeast Tennessee while I lived there! Favorite parts were hiking in creeks as well as along side of them, waterfalls, the silence of all human noise. Here’s one ofmy hikes.
had the best of both worlds. city living + grandparents with a cottage ‘up nort’ on a lake. tho had an outhouse for years. camps a few times with cousiin as a tween on same lake. fished + fished with grandpa. love up north, but better estate sales in town.
I’ve camped in the past, but these days I’m more concrete canyon by preference.
I like having nice places to bicycle but, other than that, I’m a city person.
Both.
Uncle Sam got all the camping out of this boy. Now, if it doesn’t have room service, I consider that roughing it.
My father defined ‘camping’ as a hotel that didn’t have room service.
Gahh! David beat me to it!
Camping typically involves a Motel 6. I grew up scouting but lived in the country so really preferred hauling the massive iron king size bed frame with feather mattress out past the barn and watching the stars and listening to the coyotes.
But after more than decade of living in Las Vegas, Nevada, we’re looking for twenty acres somewhere so we can get back to the country, keep some horses and enjoy life without all those pesky people. But, having learned a lot since my childhood, we’ll want to have a major city in driving distance so we can enjoy a symphony, a ballet, or at least hit Fry’s for some new technology every now and then.
Haven’t camped since Girl Scout camping days. I read some of Pam Houston’s autobiographical stories of climbing mountains, snoozing buck naked in sleeping bags in freezing temperatures, and hiking in Bhutan, and I realize more and more that I like reading about climbing the Grand Tetons more than I would like actually doing it.
If the apocalypse comes, I’ll probably have to set up with a tent, but ’til then, I’m gonna be happy in my house.
You know what they call room service at the Motel 6? Vending machine. I’m a city boy born and raised, but I think I’ll pick myself up a cheap tent and sleeping bag and give it a go one day. In fact, the only upside to my know living in Florida is that you can pretty much go camping all year long. One question though – are there any campgrounds with wi-fi? 🙂
I love to camp. If it weren’t for camping, I’d have become a pyromaniac. I love campfires, but more than that, I love chopping wood. I know, it’s weird, but I do. All through college, a dear friend of mine would have me up to her dad’s cabin in the mountains north and west of Boulder, which was, shall we say, rustic. A wood stove and a platform for sleeping bags, and that’s about it. But there were a couple of fallen trees that I sawed into chunks and split over the course of four years. Best therapy I ever had. We even went up in the winter a few times.
I’ve done quite a bit of tent camping since then, but since Mr. BuggyQ started his own business, neither of us has had the time or energy to go anywhere when we have a free weekend. Which is too bad–I could really stand to chop some wood these days.
oh buggy, yes. fire. on the beach or in the wood stove.
I don’t see why “outdoors” and “city mouse” are supposed to be opposites; I love the outdoors and go walking on the nature trails and massive park system that extends from downtown here to the extreme west end of the city. I frequently do my exercises in the summer on the riverbank, and I pick flowers and mulberries from the wild areas near the river, five minutes’ walk from my streetcar-suburb type urban front door.
I can’tstand the country, though. If you have to drive to it, there are more cows than people, and all the people with IQs over room temperature in Celsius leave after high school because they don’t want to get stuck in the same dead-end quasi-industrial jobs their parents work, I don’t want it.
I’ve frequently done Society for Creative Anachronism-style camping, but that is generally to the regular sort of camping as the Royal York is to a no-tell motel.
Balmorhea.
McKinney Falls.
Palo Duro Canyon (likewise its cousins Copper Breaks and Caprock Canyons).
I’m a tent/car camper. I travel with “seven elephants” – a minivan can haul a lot of gear and firewood.
One of my faves is Turner Falls, Ok.
Campfire every morning and evening, books on tape, and sizzling steaks with sauteed mushrooms.
Here’s the view of Honey Creek from my campsite:
Other Sarah-
I’ve never been to Balmorhea- the timing never works out when I’ve tried to make plans.
But it’s at the top of my “places I should have already gone to” list.
It’s been over 5 years since I have been sorta camping, which was at the Kerrville Folk Festival. Almost 10 years since camping at a non-festival setting.
I do miss it. I think most of us could do with some time in places where cell phones and internet are less than afterthoughts, places where the natural beauty and remoteness make the electronic gadgets feel just downright wrong.
Camping. No. Fail. The Missus is planning a trip this summer with The Midget. it’ll be great for me because I’ll be home alone with a clean house and The Classic.
Lived on a farm till I was 8 (went to an excellent one-room school, too) before my dad had to quit farming due to poor health and we moved to town, where there were more kids in my third grade classroom than had been in my whole school. Anyway, our house was right across the street from the river, and I spent a LOT of time there fishing and camping. When my wife and I and one of our high school buddies were young and stupid we bought five acres of wild land up on the South Fork of the Flambeau in northern Wisconsin and camped and fished every year. Now we have a small three-season cottage (yay indoor plumbing and baseboard heat!) up there on a lake with a screen porch where we watch sunsets and tease the mosquitoes, and a dock and small boat from whence we fish. Outdoors or a city mouse? Guess the answer’s yes.
…I grew up hunting, fishing, and camping. While in college, I spent my summers working for the Forest Service and spent every week ALL SUMMER LONG living in tents and cooking on Coleman stoves. For five summers.
When our children were still small, Mrs. Jack K. (who also grew up in a camping family) said “we should start going camping; it will be good for the kids.” “Good idea”, I said, and I bought a camp trailer (with beds and a bathroom and a fridge and an oven…and a heater). I like the outdoors (it is, after all, sort of requirement in my line of work) and have never lived in a ‘city’ in my whole life, but I camp in comfort…
I live in the woods, so camping for me is a bus man’s holiday. I camp to fish, or to hunt birds. The city is great for food, all kinds of food. This last weekend in Minneapolis (I was there for less than 48 hours) I ate Thai, Vietnamese, a great American breakfast, & one hellacious caraway rye, smoked turkey sandwich. I also spent two hours in the tattoo artist’s chair.
We tried camping a hundred years ago, on Ocracoke Island off the NC coast. Our Coleman lantern ignited the dry beach grass. Our air mattresses deflated. Our tent was hot and stuffy, and the campsite sand was hard. We slept in the car, then we checked into the little inn down in town the next morning after a couple of their lovely herring roe omelets, and we haven’t camped since.
That doesn’t mean we don’t like the outdoors. We just like our comforts too. That’s why we moved right next door to a major national park. We were just up a few thousand feet exploring the foggy rain forest a few hours ago. Now we’re warm and dry and comfortable at home.
virgotex,
I need to go *back* to Balmorhea.
Also, Caprock Canyons. Have you been to Lockhart or Mother Neff?
I like to travel and enjoy visiting cities. I love the museums, restaurants, cultural experiences, etc. but need green and quiet to soothe my soul. Sometimes I find great solice in solitude, Feral creature that I am…