Camping Girl

 Camping. A summer pastime that I absolutely love. I don’t camp nearly as often as I used to, or would like to. Growing up, camping was our weekend getaway. We had our family camper on a little campground at a place called Shady Rest in Jones, Michigan. I have many fond memories from spending time there. So to me, camping is in my blood.

Our friends recently invited us along on a camping trip up in the U.P. Since they all have campers, they have been suggesting that we get one and questioned why we don’t. We used to have a camper, but when the maintenance became more frequent than the camping itself, we had to let it go. It was around that time that we did some tent camping and found out we liked the ease of it. We found that don’t need to pull a camper behind our truck in order to enjoy the outdoors. We insisted that tent camping is way easier than hauling a trailer. The only problem can be rain. Nobody likes to sit out the rain in a wet tent. However, when it came time to pack for our trip, the list of things we needed to bring quickly got overwhelming. I was starting to think that this wasn’t going to be as simple as I remembered. The top items on the list were the biggies. Tent, air mattress, bedding. And I couldn’t forget the flashlights for those late night trips to the restroom.

And then there was the cooking. We needed to take cooking pans, plates, silverware, napkins, and something to wash dishes in. I also needed to have a place to store food. Since we don’t have a refrigerator, we needed to plan for a cooler and lots of ice refills. I reminded Tom that all of that needed to be secured because of bears.

The list continued to include activities like kayaks, bikes, and motorcycles. Should we bring yard games? Card games? Fishing equipment?

And then were the clothes. The northern UP was calling for weather in the 60’s which isn’t exactly shorts and t-shirt weather. So in addition to those, we packed jeans, sweatshirts, long sleeve t-shirts, and extra pairs of dry socks and shoes. As I thought of more things we needed to bring, my list went from one page to two pages.

I know it seems like most of this stuff would already be in a camper so that we’d only have to grab some clothes and hook on. But no problem. We got this! It turns out that we were right. We don’t need a camper. We can simply fit everything we need for tent camping neatly our haul-behind cargo trailer. And hope it doesn’t rain.