We already had this question once before, in the opposite direction -- what was your worst camping experience ever. But what was your best? Do you like camping? Do you prefer car camping, backpacking, or day hikes with a bed and breakfast waiting for you at the end of the day? Do you prefer to have lots of campground amenities, or would you trade all that for a little privacy?

-- Anonymous, September 07, 1999

Answers

I really like camping. We go on about one trip per year, and this years trip included white water rafting.

Sometimes we go as a big group, sometimes with just one other couple. We've never gone alone. We tend to go to campgrounds with full bathrooms and showers and a store where you can buy wood. I call it yuppy camping, but we're not so lame as to bring an air mattrress -- our friends do.

I love to cook by the fire and then sit around it all night drinking wine and talking.

Our dogs are funny about the car too. Brandy will act like you say Doc does, but Mack loves it to death. Ginger hasnt' been on a long trip yet, but she's a puker too. I give them all dramimine for a long trip.

They sleep just fine in the tent. We bought a really big one that can fit four people or two people and two dogs. They each take a side and sleep like angels. It's pretty funny to be sleeping on the same level as them though, in the morning I get my whole head licked when they want to go out. We haven't taken Ginger yet, but I'm pretty sure she wouldn't be as good.

Mack and Brandy had both been good on hikes, I didn't even need a leash to keep them with us. And we just let them drink from a water bottle too.

-- Anonymous, September 07, 1999

I used to enjoy going camping with my parents. We did car camping so it wasn't a big outdoors ordeal. Unlike you, I do find going to the bathroom outdoors to be a tremendous hardship, but luckily there are plenty of camp grounds that have flush toilets and even hot showers.

As an adult, I used to have fun on annual camping trips with people I worked with and with one of my exes who was into such things, so he had a good tent and all the equipment. That is key. I even camped in Yosemite by myself for a week. These were car camping trips. I don't think I would like backpacking, and the thought of hiking and coming back to a bed & breakfast is pretty appealing. I like lots of campground amenities but sadly realize they usually come along with large groups of people there to PAR-TAY, along with their music.

(Music in the great outdoors is one of my pet peeves. My in-laws all live in beautiful scenic places away from towns, and then play music in every room and have the TV on constantly. I would like to enjoy the QUIET, but that is not to be.)

The work campouts were fun because people would really get into it and have competitions for who could make the most elegant meal out of doors. We usually went to Big Sur and would have Saturday dinner at the Ventana Inn, then go back to our campground to sit around the fire and sing and carouse. Another time we went to Yosemite and I eended up hiking a lot more than I would have, because one of the guys knew the trails and was happy to lead us.

With my ex, we used to go camping every year over the Christmas holiday, when there was nobody else in the campgrounds. We went to Butano State Park near the coast so it wasn't very cold. It never rained on any of our outings, luckily.

I haven't camped in a while mainly because nobody I know wants to do it, though we keep talking about getting an outing together. It isn't something I'd do on my own anymore, just because of laziness and the number of noisy people with boom boxes.

-- Anonymous, September 07, 1999

I think people who bring radios into the woods should be chopped up and used for fire wood. But I do like acoustic guitars if there's no singing and if the person knows how to play. The acoustic guitar was quite nice on Sunday night ... something about guitars and the woods just works.

-- Anonymous, September 07, 1999

i love camping. my parents hate camping. so i went about twice when i was a kid - and not with my family. i went a few years ago with a boyfriend who was a tad on the anal side - and he insisted on all this food that took ages to cook; i would have been happy with a few cans of beans and some hot dogs (we only went for like two nights and i would have rather spent time hiking and such instead of cooking and cleaning). and of course every little thing turned into this huge ISSUE. from putting up the tent to unpacking the cooler to gathering wood - he likes things done a certain way. it was not a great trip.

a few weeks ago though, a friend of mind flew out from toronto, and i bought my own tent, and we headed out to mt. rainier to do some hiking on the wonderland trail - and it was SO much fun! i wish we had a little camp stove for some hot food, and i ended up not drinking the wine since i was sort of dehydrated already. but i will never forget the view when i had to pee at 3am; i refused to go to the toilets so i just peed between the tent and a tree. i nearly tipped over because i tilting so much to look at the stars :)

the hiking was fantastic, the views were fabulous, and i actually spent some time just sitting on a rock comtemplating it all. well that and sleeping while my friend did an insane hike to a look-out point. i'm a weakling and too much physical stuff makes my heart want to jump out of my chest - so i needed the break. but when i woke up - we were so hight up, that the clouds were dipping down into the little valley and swooping right past me! like... 20 feet away! incredible. i can hardly wait to go again :)

-- Anonymous, September 07, 1999

I love camping, so the worst wasn't that bad ... just disorganised. It was in New Zealand. We were two couples, and we decided it would be a fine idea to go eel fishing at night. When I say "we" I don't mean me -- I have a deep-seated fear and loathing of eels. Their teeth point backwards, did you know that? But I thought a night-time picnic and sleeping under the stars would be lovely. We took delicious food, plenty of blankets, sleeping bags, cushions, fishing lines, and lots of wine. Lots of wine. Which we drank around the campfire, under the sparkling stars. At about midnight, the boys remembered the eel-fishing plan and staggered to their feet. Damn! They'd forgotten the bait! All we had left from the feast was some cheese. "That'll do," says John, and off they wobbled. We women stoked up the fire and drank some more wine. There were noises off: splashing, giggling, shushing, shrieks. Ten minutes later they were back, without eels. "We're too drunk," said Bill soberly. So we settled down in our bags around the cosy embers, the Milky Way radiant above. It rained. Of course it rained. How could it not rain? We moved under a tree. It rained more heavily. Finally, wide awake and wet, we surrendered. We gathered up all the wet debris of our adventure. The least drunk camper drove. The best time was also under the stars, in Cornwall in England this time, while on a solo walk along the cliff path that runs round the whole coastline. I had a bivvie bag to keep any rain off and slept on a deep springy mattress of thrift, a plant that grows in big fat cushions. I woke up once when something small and quick jumped on me -- a rabbit I think.

-- Anonymous, September 07, 1999

Ok, picture this. Im out in the middle of the Australian scrub, next to a lake with my boyfriend, my two sisters and their other halves. We had a fantastic day, water skiing, hiking, drinking, whatever. Then it comes time to call it a night. We set up the tent and I say my boyfriend, ok, where's the mattress and sleeping bags? he goes, you're kidding right, I thought you bought it... Anyway to cut a long story short, we end up lying on the dirt and stones, you have never imagined anything so uncomfortable. Getting no sleep whatsoever. I turn to him some 2 restless hours later and suggest that it makes no sense for both of us to get no sleep, so why don't I lie on top of him and try and sleep that way? His look said it all. On top of that my sister and her boyfriends constant snoring in the next tent did nothing to help matters. Needless to say we havn't gone camping since.

-- Anonymous, September 07, 1999

I think the best vacation I had in college was a camping trip over spring break. Me and two of my friends loaded up the jeep to the gills (I came from a camping/fishing family, so I was well equipped) and drove 8 hours to Del Rio on the Texas/Mexico border.

It was camping the way I like it. We were at a basic state campground, but we trekked back to a quiet place in the woods away from the RVs and the homeless people, where we claimed a large amount of space with trees just a quick dash from Lake Amistad. We had everything we could pack in the jeep - a 4-person tent for us, a pup tent for all our stuff, lawn chairs, lots of blankets and cooking equipment and food. Every day, we got up a little after dawn and started our breakfast fire, woke up slowly while we made breakfast, threw some stuff in the coals to have for lunch (we were cooking fiends on this trip, and masters of tin foil cooking), and then hike in the hills and around the lake. We'd have lunch, then cross the border into Ciudad Acuna to wander and shop, especially off the beaten path of the tourist strip. On our way back into Del Rio, we'd stop for more beer and more food and spend the afternoons spread out in the vicinity of our campsite, reading. We'd picked up a hammock in Acuna and would take turns napping in that.

It would be totally silent all afternoon, each of us doing our own things. When the crickets started up just before dusk, we would build up the fire and start dinner. We'd eat under the stars and start in on the beer, telling stories and jokes until we crawled into the tent for the night.

The only really weird bit was the doodle bugs (aka pill bugs or roly-polys depending on where you're from). Every morning we would wake up with the outside of the tent covered in them. They didn't bother us, we didn't bother them.

On the way back to Denton on Friday, we stopped in Austin to visit some high school buddies of one of my friends. We didn't make it back to Denton until Sunday. Lost Weekend, for sure. One of the few I've had. It was a blast, the whole week :)

A hot dog, with a bit of cheese, wrapped in a slightly buttered tortilla, with the whole thing wrapped in foil, cooked in coals for several hours. Seasoned with a slight bit of ash. Heaven after a couple hours' hike.

I really need to go camping this fall.

-- Anonymous, September 07, 1999

Oh man. Camping. I haven't gone on a camping trip yet where I didn't feel as though I was standing at the threshold of hell.

This past summer in June was my first time camping. My boyfriend's best friend Jeremy, who decided that camping was the best way to celebrate his 20th birthday, invited us up to Wisconsin in the middle of an apple orchard to camp for one night. The apple orchard is owned by his father's friend, and the guy's house is only a few hundred yards from the site we were going to be camping at. Sounds decent, right? Wrong. In the 17 hours we were there, we:

-dropped a telephone pole on a family of skunks,
-lost the stakes to our tent,
-witnessed a completely naked man running up a 90-degree angled hill,
-witnessed the completely naked man fall chest-first off of a picnic table,
-got caught in a four-hour lightning storm in a very unsturdy tent,
-were woken up at 4:00 in the morning by someone throwing the empty keg into the bonfire,
-were woken up at 9 a.m. in a flooded tent,
-were escorted out of the apple orchard in a truck flinging mud all over us,
-and found out that the van we had borrowed had a problem with its gas tank and ran out of gas 50 miles from home.

The next camping trip fared nearly as worse. We went to a country-Woodstock sort of thing, again in Wisconsin. We:

-camped with a bunch of pretty boys and airheads who were extremely loud,
-set up camp right next to an all-night makeshift dance club,
-had no shower for 3 days,
-received a fine because our campsite was a complete wreck,
-missed the first day of shows because Jeremy didn't show up with the tickets on time, and then forgot mine,
-paid $60 bucks to a scalper so I could get into the concerts,
-spent about $100 on food and drinks,
-got severely sunburned,
-had a firework thrown down the back of my shirt, resulting in a 3rd-degree burn on top of my sunburn in the middle of my back,
-had our tent pissed on by some drunk idiot,
-had my sunglasses stolen by another drunk idiot who wore homemade tank tops the entire time,
-encountered another torrential downpour, resulting in our tent being flooded again,
-slept in the car, and
-got stuck in the mud when we attempted to finally leave.

Oh, yeah, "Aunt Martha" was visiting both times.

I hate camping.

-- Anonymous, September 10, 1999

I like to camp but my wife's idea of camping is a bed & breakfast, so we've kind of had to make some compromises. (Read: I haven't been camping in a couple years, unless you count going on tour with my band, which probably should.) We do a lot of day hikes, mostly of the "hike up into the hills onto BLM land with our guns, shoot a bunch of holes in the hillside, and hike back" variety, but a little actual hiking. But I'm a long-time camping freak, and we got a bunch of camping gear in our wedding presents, so we should be doing some camping before long. We're going to do a weekend Renaissance Faire event selling doodads, so technically that will be "camping" of the type I'm most used to (years of SCA events.) But hopefully we'll be able to go to an actual campground sometime... please honey? Please? I'll see if there is a desolate wilderness area that serves a continental breakfast and leaves mints on the rocks.

-- Anonymous, September 12, 1999