This might be a kind of dumb idea for a thread, but that's never stopped me before and I'm curious. I've been spending a lot of time camping since it warmed up (which in Minnesota means since the high reached about 50 degrees) And one night as we were sitting around the bonfire I got to thinking that I never hear about an Englishman going out camping or a German buying an RV. That could be because the rest of the world is smarter and doesn't want to sleep on the ground or it could be just because I just haven't heard much about it. So is camping basically an American thing or is it international? Everyone should enjoy lighting large fires and drinking large amounts of alcohol and then going for a swim in water of questionable purity. And if camping is international, how do you prefer it? An RV, fully loaded electricity and the whole nine yards or do you take maybe a blanket with you and end up hoping for the best? One thing I have learned so far this summer: Normally strangers end up frowning on unexpected visitors at 3 am, but if you visit their tent with free beer..... more often than not, you've just made new friends. I love camping.
Please tell me that was 50 degrees farenheit ? It's not just an american thing, although I guess you guys do have that much more space to do it in I have been camping in many different ways over the years. My parents used to take my sister and me away in a VW transporter with a small gas cooker and minimum comfort. They would pick us up from our beds, asleep, put us on the bed in the back, and we would wake up in a lay-by in South Wales or somewhere, with the smell of toast and have home-made mini-pizzas for lunch... Then we packed up and moved to France, that was forced camping for about a month. They sold our house in England and left for France before buying or even choosing a house here, so we lived in a second-hand caravan for a while... Yeah, kind of fun, but I wouldn't do it again unless I have to. We kept the caravan and used it as a spare room for us when we had too many paying guests in the house (which is particularly fun at Christmas or in the boiling hot Summer) so I kind of went off Caravans for a while. At the end of my secondary/high school I went camping with 2 guys from my class and had probably the best summer of my teenage years. Ok, definitely the best. The high note of the whole thing was a spaghetti fight. We were scraping them off the neighbouring caravans for days. That was in a tent, and it was tremendous fun... My husband and I have been camping a couple of times since then, but my back now gets very painful if I lie on anything too hard (including sand ) for more than 5 minutes. So we have to take an inflatable matress, and if it doesn't deflate on us and we have time to blow it up, everything's ok...
[quote:dd674d8978="Katcal"]Please tell me that was 50 degrees farenheit ? [/quote:dd674d8978] *Used to go rockclimbing, camping, and hiking in 50 degree celsius weather* Sissies.
Yep, I'll admit to being a sissy... It's at least 40 celsius all through the summer here, and I can hardly move for 2 months.
[img:fc07d9fd86]http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/B00009PAJS.02.LZZZZZZZ.jpg[/img:fc07d9fd86] Carry on Camping
I enjoy camping I have to say but have many friends who wouldn't be able to cope without a hairdryer for more than a day or so. As a former Girl Guide (a good few years ago now) I have to say I used to love going camping but back then things were really organised. A tent full of provisions to feed the troup, Building tables out of twigs and other outdoorsy type things like that. Nowadays any camping I generally do is concert related. If I'm going to a music festival (fleadh) I'll generally camp to save money!. Britain and Ireland get a lot of rain so to be fair camping here isn't always what it would be in say, the south of France! 8)
[quote:9d5b4ede50="Perdita"]Building tables out of twigs and other outdoorsy type things like that.[/quote:9d5b4ede50] Could you elaborate on the tables out of twigs part? I'm trying to imagine it but it's just not working for me. It seems that it would either take a very, very long time or it would be a very small table.
[quote:dda460f787="redneck"][quote:dda460f787="Perdita"]Building tables out of twigs and other outdoorsy type things like that.[/quote:dda460f787] Could you elaborate on the tables out of twigs part? I'm trying to imagine it but it's just not working for me. It seems that it would either take a very, very long time or it would be a very small table.[/quote:dda460f787] em, yes, they were very small tables... for birds having afternoon tea perhaps? Seriously, we used to build upright dressers and tables using bamboo like sticks and thick baler twine (no one will understand that reference perhaps I should say 'really good string' instead). Hard to imagine, I know, but .... think of loads of bamboo sticks laid flat with string woven through each slat to hold them together. thn more bamboo added to create 'legs ' for the table. Obviously we had to use loads of really intricate knots and stuff. Surprisingly this camping furniture was pretty sturdy. I've just read that last bit and it doesn't make sense ... Bah.... I wish I had pictures!!!
I get what you'r saying now. I understand the bamboo, but for the life of me I couldn't imagine doing that with little bitty sticks. And I grew up around farm life so I even know what baling twine is.
camping in SA isn't much diffrent, we dont go camping as often now days but when we dp its a blast. i must agree with the whole 3am wake up call. the drinks definitly help. as for the bamboo ideas i think its rather cool, i feel like going camping now just to try Note to self. Go camping were there is actually bamboo
My friends and I went camping a couple of years ago, round Cornwall and Devon. We were broke and wanted a super cheap week away somewhere. It wasn't exactly roughing it, we went to campsites with shower facilities. Waking up with a hangover in a tent is pretty awful. Especially if you drunkenly decide to go paddling in a river before going to bed. If you're a right idiot and don't change out of the wet trousers, it is particularly uncomfortable. It was fun though. Despite the fact I got stuck over a perilous drop while climbing rocks. And despite my friend having a bit of a panic attack while on a horse. And despite nearly drowning while body boarding. Oh yeah. It rained when we were trying to take the tents down. It always does. It's God's little joke, and His way of saying "next time, get a hotel". Other than that, I've only camped at the Reading festival before. It was slightly different. The queue for the showers was over 2 hours long, the toilets were stereotypically horrific, the food was overpriced and the beer was warm. But! It's all part of the English festival experience. I love camping. Edit: but! put me somewhere rustic, in the middle of a forest or something, with a tent and a sleeping bag, and i probably wouldn't survive the night. I don't have a clue about knots, or making fire the caveman way, or cooking food on anything other than... well, anything. Yeah, I'm really not a "roughing it" camping kind of person.
My family and I are going camping later this summer in the UP after our family reunion. The family reunion is in a big city state park with e-coli filled beaches but up north we are going to go canoeing on the Two Hearted River. I've been camping since I was a baby and we have a rustic camp ground near our house that we used to go to almost every weekend. We used to use a tent but we've moved on to a pop up camper. Its not really that different because we don't use the sink the camper came with and we don't use the stove unless its raining. The one thing is that the camper has lights while the tent didn't which makes late night card games easier to play. I love camping especially if there is a place to swim or trails to hike.
I used to camp a lot. Then I kept planning to go camping a lot. Now I have given up entirely. I have roughed it, girl guide camped it and sat in a motor home loving it. It's always fun in the later to watch others struggling over the roughing it option. Probably my most interesting camp was a school one beside a lake in Java, Indonesia. A week of seriously roughing it. We had to move camp sites every day to a new location, either hiking or rowing to the next one. We even swam a raft to the other side of the lake (it fell apart after about 5 minutes and we didn't want to turn back) before being dragged (I say dragged, we were taken in a 'speed' boat) back to get our stuff. I am just glad our group survived. Another group found themselves knee deep in thick mud and rain and forced to trudge back to base camp (they, however, got showers and bathrooms that night). I also figured out that cooking rice on a home-made fire with a bunch of people who have lived with maids all their lives is not an easy task. We had uncooked, burnt rice with tomato ketchup for dinner one night.
We used to go on camping holidays a lot when we were kids though my dad didn't really believe in roughing it so it was always to camp sites with toilet/shower blocks. We had a large frame tent with four double sleeping compartments (for five of us) so one was always used as storage, and a small separate kitchen section ( held a two burner gas stove with grill). We always took a couple of old carpets to lay on the ground sheet to make things more comfortable. We had a trailer and a roof rack to carry everything. The last time we camped we went to the Loire (France) where we hired a tent. As the tent is always there it had a few extras like electric light and a fridge, and camp beds instead of air beds. No carpets though!
[quote:6eecb25e6d="jaccairn"]No carpets though![/quote:6eecb25e6d] The French don't believe in carpets. Carpets are things that happen to other people. I once went to an English teacher's house, and she looooved everything English, and so she loved carpets and had carpet in her bathroom. Except of course she didn't understand quite how it worked, and had carpet on the walls and ceiling too. olive green shagpile carpet. **shudders**
I will be going backpacking in New Mexico after school gets out (which, now that I think about it, is this thursday).
[quote:004f7321e6="Katcal"][quote:004f7321e6="jaccairn"]No carpets though![/quote:004f7321e6] The French don't believe in carpets. Carpets are things that happen to other people. I once went to an English teacher's house, and she looooved everything English, and so she loved carpets and had carpet in her bathroom. Except of course she didn't understand quite how it worked, and had carpet on the walls and ceiling too. olive green shagpile carpet. **shudders**[/quote:004f7321e6] I know lots of countries where a carpet is considered too valuable to put it only on the floor... I guess its not the kind of carpet you are talking about though.
[quote:4eba832a21="Katcal"][quote:4eba832a21="jaccairn"]No carpets though![/quote:4eba832a21] The French don't believe in carpets. Carpets are things that happen to other people. I once went to an English teacher's house, and she looooved everything English, and so she loved carpets and had carpet in her bathroom. Except of course she didn't understand quite how it worked, and had carpet on the walls and ceiling too. olive green shagpile carpet. **shudders**[/quote:4eba832a21] Strictly speaking, a carpet on the wall is a tapestry (unless it is actually being using to replace wallpaper - in which case *Shudders as well!*) - what you call it on the ceiling I couldn't hazard a guess - especially in a bathroom!
[quote:0ac5496b4e="Pixel"][quote:0ac5496b4e="Katcal"][quote:0ac5496b4e="jaccairn"]No carpets though![/quote:0ac5496b4e] The French don't believe in carpets. Carpets are things that happen to other people. I once went to an English teacher's house, and she looooved everything English, and so she loved carpets and had carpet in her bathroom. Except of course she didn't understand quite how it worked, and had carpet on the walls and ceiling too. olive green shagpile carpet. **shudders**[/quote:0ac5496b4e] Strictly speaking, a carpet on the wall is a tapestry (unless it is actually being using to replace wallpaper - in which case *Shudders as well!*) - what you call it on the ceiling I couldn't hazard a guess - especially in a bathroom![/quote:0ac5496b4e] I didn't mean "a carpet" as in a rug... I meant carpet, as in wall to wall and floor to ceiling... Oh, and on the toilet seat cover too... **shudders in recollection**
Ugh. O-kay. Back to topic though, I spent most of my first four years on a camping site. It's probably a lot more regulated than the experience some of you hinted at...
Scratch the family reunion plans but we are still going up north with most of my dad's immediate family. I can't wait to go camping even though it's rustic and we have to bathe in the river or pay $3 to take one.
I thought that not showering/bathing was part of the camping ritual. If not, then why did I go 48 days without one? Oh yeah, I remember now. It was on a bet. I won.
[quote:6d6526a981="redneck"]I thought that not showering/bathing was part of the camping ritual. If not, then why did I go 48 days without one? Oh yeah, I remember now. It was on a bet. I won.[/quote:6d6526a981] OK, but was whoever you had the bet with then able to get near enough to you to pay you your winnings? Though I suppose if they approached from upwind........ Watch out, Foul Ole Ron - Redneck is trying to beat your Smell!
Pixel, an interesting point here. I was whitewater rafting from about eight in the morning until after three in the afternoon. Then we would head back to the camp and swim in the lake or play volleyball. Sometimes we would try to find and catch rattlesnakes (never could find a live one), black widow spiders (one of the guys I was with could get money for them from his school), and various other deadly creatures. We used to put people to a test and ask them which of us had gone three weeks, or however long it had been at the time, without showering. I was never picked. My skin felt better, my hair looked healthier, and after a week or so your body will produce something that keeps the stench at a manageable level. No one could smell me over the foulness that was my lifejacket anyway. I swear the smell it emitted could run around and tackle people. When it was dry you couldn't smell a thing, but let one drop of water hit it and POW, it would knock your head back. Edit: the bet wasn't anthing of substance, only gloating rights. We just had a bet as to who could go the longest.
[quote:cb8912a8e1="redneck"]My skin felt better, my hair looked healthier, and after a week or so your body will produce something that keeps the stench at a manageable level.[/quote:cb8912a8e1] Try doing that in the tropics though :shock: in the time that it took for your body to mask the smell (if it ever managed to keep up)...no one would go near you. Even Foul ol' Ron Hell, no one will go near you after a walk down the road at mid-day. In this country, showers are a [i:cb8912a8e1]good[/i:cb8912a8e1] thing. Luckily when you are 'roughing it' in the tropics everyone else is in the same boat so no one really notices.
I remember a Tommorow's World experiment from when I was a kid on not washing your hair. It concluded that after roughly 6-8 weeks, your hair managed the situation and became healthier than when it's attacked by agressive shampoo detergent (yeah, the kind that hang around in dark alleyways). And actually my grandmother was just like that, she never washed her hair with detergent (probably just got used to lack of shampoo during the war(s) ) and it was beautiful and soft and didn't smell at all... But then it does probably depend on the way each body works (as well as the climate, your surroundings and your activities), some people can wash well every day and still smell 'orrible, and other people wash once a week or less and not smell of anything in particular. Unfortunately I work with someone who doesn't wash and smells incredibly bad... :doubt:
[quote:ac156f4414="Katcal"]I remember a Tommorow's World experiment from when I was a kid on not washing your hair. It concluded that after roughly 6-8 weeks, your hair managed the situation and became healthier than when it's attacked by agressive shampoo detergent (yeah, the kind that hang around in dark alleyways). And actually my grandmother was just like that, she never washed her hair with detergent (probably just got used to lack of shampoo during the war(s) ) and it was beautiful and soft and didn't smell at all... [/quote:ac156f4414] I've heard that before - actually, I was recently told not to shower and wash my hair every day, because that would help my hair (it's over 60 cm long and can need every break from washing and drying it can get - but I'm so used to my daily shower that I feel only half human without it). Did that experiment include washing your hair it with water only? Or not washing it at all? If you run or exercise a few times a week, wouldn't the sweat itch on your head? And did only children take part on the experiment? (Small children just smell a lot more pleasant than grown ups and these days every nurse tells you not to bathe them more often than once a week, anyway. My daughter uses shampoo maybe once a month, when something got stuck in her hair, and she's got the silkiest hair you can imagine.)
As far as I remember, it was on adults only. And I can't quite remember if they were allowed to wet their hair at all or if it was all-out no washing... Hair washing is all about habit anyway, I'm used to only washing mine once or twice a month, and it's fine (even rather dry) in between washes, unless anything unusual happens (extra-sweaty workout, getting stuff caught in it, or whatever) A few years ago I used to wash it almost every day, and it got unbearably greasy between washes, and incredibly dry just after the wash. Your hair gets used to the rhythm it's washed at, as well as reacting to the environment...
So, I am going camping on sunday. And it won't be the kind where you get out of a car and set up camp. It is the kind where you hike for severa hours to get the the campsite, and carry everything on your back. I should be back on monday.
[quote:3cc5663a00="QuothTheRaven"]I will be going backpacking in New Mexico after school gets out (which, now that I think about it, is this thursday).[/quote:3cc5663a00] Where in NM are you going camping, hun?
[quote:0dcd7016b7="somethingclever"][quote:0dcd7016b7="QuothTheRaven"]I will be going backpacking in New Mexico after school gets out (which, now that I think about it, is this thursday).[/quote:0dcd7016b7] Where in NM are you going camping, hun?[/quote:0dcd7016b7] Philmont. However, that is not for a few weeks. the one tomarrow is just for practice.
So Quoth, are you a scout? I had a friend camp there several years in a row as an Eagle Scout and he loved it.
It's like warming up to the big finish. Philmont is waaaaaayy out in the middle of nowwhere. They practice camp to make sure they have/know everything they need to have/know. You would rather find out you left your matches in the house before you got in the middle of the wilderness.
I've never really been wilderness camping so anything we've forgotten we buy and add to our camping list so we don't forget it next time.
So, I am back. My feet hurt like fucking hell (10 miles on the first day, 7 on the second, with 35-40 pounds straped to my back), but I survived. And yes, I am a scout.
