I love camping.

After a dearth of camping going on in my life—I hadn’t been since before I started back in school, over four years ago—E and I have gone camping twice in the last month.

The first time was over spring break. We camped two of the nights, since we were going with the flow. We actually had to buy the tent down in Laguna Beach, since we had originally planned to sleep in the back of the Jeep, but completely forgot that we had stuffed it full with all of our gear and thus had no room for us.

Those two nights, we camped in San Clemente and Oceano Dunes. It was the first time I had camped that close to the ocean and not been freezing, previous experience being Dillon Beach, near Petaluma, which I recommend to no one in a tent.

Then last weekend, we went camping at Lake Shasta for E’s birthday.

It was our first two-day stay, meaning we didn’t take down camp immediately the next morning, and was our lesson in being better prepared. Which we were not.

E’s parents have these really awesome “camp boxes” which hold everything you need to camp, besides food, tent, and sleeping bags. Because we took the boxes this time (not over spring break), we didn’t really look through them to see what we needed. Turns out, we still needed a lot.

For example, I am the official camp dishwasher. I don’t mind this job¹ as long as I am well prepared. And still, not prepared. I was expected to clean caked-on pans with… napkins. We forgot a scrubbie, again. At least we remembered to grab the soap from the kitchen sink, otherwise we would have been without that, too.

We were also minus a hatchet, which would have made it much easier to gather firewood, since we couldn’t break the larger pieces that would have burned better.

I love camping, though. It’s always nice to find more things that E and I seriously enjoy doing together. I’ve missed camping, as my parents have pretty much given it up since their RV went down the crapper, and they won’t camp without it. I have great memories of camping, and really do think it’s a great way to get away.

E and I have plans to try to go camping every month or so. We’re working on our own camping boxes², planing on scoping yard sales for items on the cheep. After all, silverware doesn’t have to match when we’re camping.

And while we’re not “green” people in the sense that we try to be as green as possible, we both agree that we should limit our camping paper products. It’s much cheaper to use cloth towels and plastic plates, then using a bunch of paper that is just going to get thrown in the fire.

I’m so glad we went camping. It was fun to get away, and finally get caught up on our reading³. And also to unconnect. It was the first time in awhile that I took a weekend away from the laptop, and being unconnected with the world is pretty relaxing. I couldn’t do it for a long time, but a few days here and there is a good call.

(P.S.: This post isn’t anything where I thought it would go. I thought I’d write about our unintentional three-mile hike, but instead got distracted into the thought of getting back into camping. In another time, I would have held of and re-written it to be where I thought I wanted to go, but I promised to try a post a week, and if I tried to rewrite it, it would sit in post-limbo for another month.)

1. Since I love doing dishes, it’s natural that this roll falls to me. And I know it’s wierd that I love doing dishes [back]
2. We seriously sat down with a notepad and listed everything we needed, that we never remember. Flashlight, anyone? [back]
3. Anyone walking by camp would have thought we were devout… we were both catching up on our Bible as Lit reading, so we had our bibles out and about all weekend. [back]

Tagged: on Wednesday, April 8, 2009 · 3 Comments »