Hotel Camping

We are not camping people.  My husband and I, once when we were younger, took a 4 day camping trip into the Boundary Waters of Minnesota.  It was hard core.  Pack in, pack out.  We had to portage our canoe ridiculous distances, and tie up our stuff during the night so that bears couldn't get at it.  Bears. And mosquitos, which, in northern Minnesota, are difficult to distinguish from the bears. After the first night, the safety mechanism on our cookstove slipped, and we were unable to figure this out for the remainder of the trip, since we pretty much had zilch camping experience between the two of us.  Which meant granola bars and PB&J for the next 3 days, while we looked longingly at our dried rations.  We got used to drinking the tablet-treated lakewater, sort of.  I mean, do you ever get used to drinking brown water with sediment?  I still remember that first glass of ice cold clear water that we had once we straggled in. It was like nectar. We survived, and actually had a good time, but I think we were a little traumatized. So that was our last camping experience, no kids, about 12 years ago.

If you look closely, you can actually see the mosquitos lurking in the foliage.
www.moshannonfalls.com

The thing is, I've come to realize that what I really enjoy is hotel camping.  Especially in nice hotels. Since my husband earns hotel points from his business travel, I have roughed it in more than my fair share of really nice hotel "campgrounds." Clean water. Generous shower. Pool.  Wi-fi. Workout room. Clean crisp sheets, without little toys or binkies or food particles lurking underneath the blankets.

The Heavenly Bed.  It's exponentially more comfortable than a sleeping bag.
I'm surprised they don't use this in their ad copy, actually.

The kids also love hotel camping, which was why I was a little surprised when my son started bugging us about taking them wilderness camping.  It started in the middle of an otherwise uneventful dinner.

Michael: Daddy when are you going to take us camping?  Because you said that when Allison was old enough, we could go. And now she's old enough, but we have the twins.

Daddy: That's right, son.  And when the twins are old enough, we are going to have another baby (this comment made me throw up in my mouth a little bit).  And we're just going to keep on having babies so that we never have to take you camping.

Allison (listening intently, blurts): Daddy!  You can't have any more babies!  You had your balls chopped!

Allison, roughing it on one of our wilderness hotel camping adventures.

She had him there.  I'm not sure how she heard about my husband's vasectomy, or how she connected it with having babies.  We haven't had any sort of talk along those lines with her, but she does have an extremely knowledgeable older brother who loves to dispense his font of information to others.  I can't totally control that.  At any rate, I remember responding to her comment by looking off to the side and suddenly deciding to chew my food very deliberately.  It was important that I didn't make eye contact with my husband, as that would have put one or both of us at high risk of choking on our food.

This conversation happened many months ago, and since then, I've had this nagging guilty feeling that we really should take the kids camping so that they can experience Nature in all Her Glory.  I don't know why I feel this way- it's not like my parents ever took us camping when we were little.  I guess because the Northwest has such beautiful campsites and protected areas. And what could be more fun than camping with four kids, two of whom are toddlers and still in diapers. So against my better judgement, we now have a 10 person tent, sleeping bags for the kids, and a plan for the summer.  It's cheaper than a few nights of hotel camping, I suppose.  So that's it, we're going camping sometime this summer.  In the wilderness. Where there could be bears and mosquitos. Stay tuned.  Wish us luck.