Camp Fantasy

My BFF's birthday is around the corner and she wants to go (oh no!) camping.  Now, I love the IDEA of camping: the fun gear, the singing by the campfire, the s'mores, being away from the concrete jungle but in reality, not so much.

My family only went camping one time, for one night, actually.  It turned into one of those David Sedaris short stories that is awfully funny now but not back then.  After a knock down drag out fight with my older sister that she had to go come with us for the weekend,  we drove the three hours or so to Linville Falls, NC a beautiful spot in the NC Appalachian Trail.  We had my Dad's tent from Vietnam (NO JOKE) but only my sister could figure out how to put it up (thank goodness, she lost her battle to not join the trip).  My mom, scared of bears, slept in the car -locked, mind you-while the three of huddled in the tent. My sister tends to do a bit of sleep walking and literally cold hocked me in the middle of the night while my Dad watched in horror.  Needless to say, we checked into a hotel the next night (in separate rooms, no less) and no one brought up camping again.


Fast forward 20 years or so and I went AGAIN this fall.  This time, my camping partner who is super into it had all the gear, the perfect trails to hike, the perfect place to pitch the thing.... I mean, tent but the one thing she couldn't control was the weather. And it was bad. It rained all night.  Sloshing in the mud in the cold at crack of dawn, we decided we had had all the fun we could take and threw the gear, much to her husband's dismay, into the back of the car.  She had made homemade hot chocolate for breakfast but in our weariness, we melted the bowl we needed to heat it up.  Sigh. It was time to return home.

Here's our camping spot. It looked better before the rainstorm with a charming fire pit going and stars looming large.

Trying to make hot chocolate before fleeing the scene.  

Now it's truly camping weather and the romance of "hitting the trails" sounds nice again.  I explored staying in a yurt but those suckers aren't cheap. And it seems from the "no vacancy" signs on many websites that we aren't the only ones to have this idea.    

In fact, camping isn't what I want to do anyway but rather glamping-glamorous camping.  When people say, do you like to camp? Well, yes if this is what they mean:

or this....

   

 

I am obsessed with the idea of this sort of camping... a beautiful piece of land, a tent covered dining set up from Snow Peak. 

With this chic chair from Snow Peak to seat in as campfire songs are song...

or LL Bean's cot to lounge on under the stars (take THAT, hard, lumpy ground).

and call it a night. 

Live large, 

Fb