Elsewhere in the Linguasphere | Main | Memorial Day
May 27, 2003
Great Outdoors
Our Memorial Day weekend was spent car camping with some good company in the Trapper Creek Wilderness in Washington. It's a nice find. Though the sites were much more primitive than what you tend to find at state parks and ACoE rec areas (small fire rings only, except for one smallish RV area; and bring a cat-hole trowel), they were far apart from each other and well off the roads. Compared to Lost Lake at Mt. Hood, it's a much more secluded, quiet, uncrowded spot, and it's not much more than 70 miles from Portland.
Car camping earns some sneers from "serious" campers who prefer to backpack. I've enjoyed a few backpacking trips, myself, but the last couple of years have seen me sort of digging just loading up the car with a tent, sleeping bags, and a box of cooking stuff and going somewhere quiet. It's not about the pleasurable sense of self-sufficiency backpacking engenders, but the way I get to feel unplugged for a few days. After the first few hours of hanging out at the site or walking around on a short dayhike trail, I stop thinking about whatever I've got to do in the real world and start enjoying where I am. After a few nights of sleeping in a tent, it's nice to get home, too.
Apropos the whole car camping thing (and because I'm suddenly not feeling like coming up with a pithy way to work them into oblique links):
- PBS provides a brief appreciation of car camping's history.
- RoadTrip America's car camping page.
- A remarkably thorough packing list from gorp.com
Comments
Millions of Americans would agree with you. According to the latest 'participation study' conducted by the Outdoor Industry Association, 22.4% of Americans ages 16 and older car camped at least once in 2002. Fewer, roughly 3%, car camped 8 times or more last year. Either way you look at it, that's a lot of people. Car Camping Rules!
Posted by: Mikal B. at May 27, 2003 7:11 PM