When you are looking for a gift for your someone who has everything in your life don’t forget to think about their outdoor activities.
For example, if they like to camp there are so many new, and inventive, tents, gear and gadgets that they will love. I have so many to show you…
But before I go into that I have a story to tell you.
When I was in high school the guy I was going out with decided to throw a party for the first day of Spring. It was a great day to celebrate in eastern Canada as that signaled the end of a long winter. So a bunch of us go together and had a BBQ. Fun was had by all until it started to snow shortly after midnight. My guy was not impressed, to say the least, so he decided that we should take off for Florida where surely there would be spring. I was hesitant. I mean who ups and drives thousands of miles on the spur of the moment.
We did.
We grabbed a map, tent, sleeping bag, all the warm weather clothing we could find and a few other odds and ends we thought we would need. Lack of money would not be a problem because we would camp. We figured a two day drive, with the first stop probably in North Carolina.
At this point I should tell you I had never camped before. My parents idea of roughing it was to rent a cottage by a lake. I had no idea of what I was getting into.
So with his Datsun all packed off we went that same night.
The first stretch of the drive was pretty uneventful. Listening to music, talking about the sun we were finally going to see. We drove through the night and all the next day. It was getting to the point where chips and candy bars weren’t satisfying our hunger so we decided to stop and have something decent to eat. Once we reached North Carolina we started looking for a place to eat.
I need to mention here that we were ‘hippies’ (Woodstock era). My hair was half way down my back and his hair was to his shoulders. Never occurred to us that this might be a problem until we walked into the truck stop. The patrons apparently were not use to seeing people like us (hippies) as there were a lot of stares and a lot of mumbles. We quickly ordered and gulped our food. We felt it best we move on as quick as possible.
By the time we left it was starting to get dark. We thought about looking for a place to camp but decided to drive a bit further. About an hour later we started to have car problems. Neither of us could figure out what was going on. All we knew was that we were starting to lose our headlights. Not good for night driving. No sooner had we realized we needed to find a camping spot for the night then we heard a siren behind us.
We pulled over.
A patrol man came up to the car window and motioned for him to roll it down. This patrol man looked like something out of a movie. A big burly guy wearing dark reflective sunglasses, at night. He took one look at us and said we had two choices, either get out of the state that night, which he would make sure we did, or get a hotel, now. Since we knew that the headlights would not last, and probably the battery would die, we headed to a hotel. He followed us. In fact he stayed until he saw us enter the hotel room.
I was glad to be off the road that night.
We were up at first light the next day and made Florida by later afternoon. We headed to the first campground we could find on the map. It looked ok, well as far as I knew what camping was. There was a main washroom area where you could shower. The area we could camp was a small space with a tiny table. At that point we were too tired to care so we pitched our very small tent, crawled into the 2 person sleeping bag and slept, and I mean slept. We barely shut our eyes and the hotel the night before in fear that either the bugs or rodents would eat us.
The next day we headed for Tampa. We were both really excited at this stage of the journey. Sandy beaches here we come! We walked the beach, swam, and generally just played around. We hardly sat down. Thinking back I would say we must have stayed at the beach for a good six hours.
As our tummies started growling we headed back to the campground to grab a shower (they had communal showers) and cook up a feast. Well in fact it was going to be mac and cheese, but who cares. We were in Florida, it was sunny and warm, and we had spent the day at the beach.
Ah Spring.
Little did I know, as the designated cook, that I would have to do this over an open fire. I had grabbed the mac and cheese, and a pot from the kitchen before we left, but this was not meant for this type of cooking. Between trying to get the food cooked so it would be edible, and not burn my hands, the pot didn’t survive.
As the sun went down we decided it was time to head to bed. Crawling into the two person sleeping bag was not as comfortable as the night before because I had a sunburn. Minutes later it started to rain, and I mean rain. I had never seen rain like this before. Apparently neither had the tent. Didn’t take long for the tent, and everything in it, to get soaked.
Sleeping was a very wet experience.
At one point during the night I had to get up to do to the washroom and it was absolutely freezing. My skin felt incredibly hot. With both of this happening I could not stop shaking. I was also a tad nervous, to say the least, because we had been told to watch out for alligators!
When we got up in the morning my back was not only bright red but was beginning to blister. With only a few dollars left I had to call my parents to wire us some money so I could get some medication for my burnt back, seeing a doctor was out of the question, and for gas to get us back home.
My first experience of camping was very eventful!
Long gone are the days of pitching a tent that barely holds two people and doesn’t keep the rain off you. Cooking on an open fire can now be history if you want.
You can find all sort of camping gear and more here.
