5 Loves & 5 Not-Loves About Our Camping Trip

So, I'm Back!

I'm really glad to be home. No, I'm REALLY glad to be home. I'm a city girl, one that tries to live naturally while having the comforts of modern day living. Camping isn't my first choice when taking a vaca. Give me a spa and a happy, well-paid staff to pamper me for a few days, and I'm satisfied.

But my camping trip wasn't all bad. Here, I happily give you the 5 things I loved and the 5 things I didn't love so much about the trip...

5 Not Loves

1: Tent Too Small
Imagine 4 people sleeping in a 2-man tent. That was us. It doesn't matter if 2 of the people are small. They kick, squirm, hog the blankets. We need a new tent.

2: Not Veggie-Friendly
Camping is meatfest. I didn't exactly plan well to eat veg. I'm still too new at this to plan veggie eating with poor refrigeration methods over a hot-spell (it was REALLY hot!).

3: Lack of Modern Conveniences
Spruce Woods is a great place to camp, but it's still camping. You share the bathrooms and showers with many others. And cooking by campfire is hard - you need an hour to start a fire and get it to hot coals. Then you have to cook, eat, and be done before sunset because washing utensils by lamplight is a bitch.
Then you have to store everything in your car so that the crazy raccoons won't get to it.

4: Getting Sick
I started feeling ill by Wednesday (we arrived there on Monday). By Thursday morning, I was getting feverish. Sick is not good when you're roughing it, taking care of kids, and don't have the comforts of home. I felt miserable.

5: At the Mercy of the Weather
It was HOT. Seriously hot. The tent was a sauna by 11am, and by 4pm, our site was bathed in sunshine with no shade to be found. There was nowhere to hide!!!
Then on Thursday night, the thunder, lightning and rain started, so we had to quickly pack up and rush home.

Oh, and the wasps were everywhere. Grrrr.

5 Loves

1: Beautiful Spruce Woods
I wasn't kidding when I said that Spruce Woods is a great place to camp. Plenty of sites, each with room for a tent, camper or RV. And they have yurts too! Most sites are secluded from neighbours thanks to trees and bush. Many clean bathrooms, showers, and laundry facilities. A beach, playground, convenience store, burger/ice cream stand, amphitheatre, gift shop, and educational centre. Go there. You'll like it too.

2: Campfire Treats
I bitched about the lack of veggie stuff, but I eventually let loose and decided to take a "food vacation" as well. I had beef jerky, marshmallows, ice cream, garlic sausage, root beer, pudding, hot dog, etc.
Needless to say, the muffin-top is still firmly in place... in fact, I think I gained a few pounds. Oh, well.

3: Perfect Beach Weather
From Monday to Thursday, it was just sun, sun, sun! We slathered on the sunblock and enjoyed the sunshine. The breeze was cool. Perfect.

4: Relaxing with Family
All I did was read one of my favourite smutty books and relax on the beach watching my kids run around. The chores and home repairs were two hours away in the city. I didn't think about my blog at all... okay, maybe once when I was screaming at wasps and threatening to blog about them. They didn't care.

5: Low Beauty-Maintenance Living
I didn't wear lipstick all week. I didn't even use moisturizer. Didn't need to. Just before we left, I gave my hair a baking soda rinse, so I didn't have to bring shampoo for myself... just for Roomie... and by Thursday, my hair was still wavy, shiny and grease-free.

We were gone for 4 days, but Roomie wants to go for 2 weeks next year! I'm tired just thinking about it. Maybe we can rent a yurt...

7 comments:

  1. LOL! I love hearing your details. :) I personally love camping, but that's probably because I was forced to start when I was under a year and we've been going ever since. Granted, if it was over a week, we took a camper (is that what a yurt is?).

    So...how do you like your marshmallows? lightly toasted or a torch-like flame (like on Indiana Jones)? Personally, I like to light mine on fire til they are all coated in black, cancer causing carcinogens. I know, bad for me, but golly they are tasty.

    I've got a 3 room, 10 person tent you can borrow next time. ;)

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  2. Yes, get a new tent! It makes a huge difference now that I can actually stand up in ours. I think we have a 6 person tent. 2 rooms, but we never put up the divider. Add a big air mattress and it's comfy. Until it heats up. Yeah, that's nasty, especially when you have a young one who still naps.

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  3. @jami -
    oh, I totally set my marshmallows on fire! Couldn't have them any other way. :)
    A yurt is a tad more permanent. Here's a great picture of one!

    okay, i'll be by to pick your tent up next year! thanks ;)

    @myrtle -
    mmmmm... 6 person tent... we gotta get ourselves one of those! what brand of tent do you have?
    And we'll need a new air mattress too... ours is a double. the kids can share that one... Roomie and I will get a new queen for ourselves.
    yeah, the heat was too nasty for *me* to hide and nap! ;)

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  4. A yurt is the Russian word for the traditional home of certain groups of nomads of central Asia (e.g. the people of Tuva or Mongolia). Before Genghis Khan conquered the world, when he was just starting out, he was first named "Ruler of all those who live in felt tents".

    A real yurt is extremely portable --- it can be disassembled in 30 minutes and carried on the back of a camel (or more likely a pick-up truck these days). It takes a few hours to assemble. It's made of an interior lattice wall (wood lattice) with wooden poles supporting the roof and the
    inside might be quite comfortable. Winter coverings are normally made of felt, summer coverings may be something lighter, poor families may have burlap coverings.

    Nenette's link looks like a western version of a yurt made to be permanent or semi-permanently located. Looks pretty cool for camping.

    Many families in Tuva and Mongolia still live in yurts, some as nomads, some in subdivisions in Ulaan Bataar.

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  5. @albert -
    thanks for details :)
    the yurt in the pic I provided looks pretty much identical to the ones at Spruce Woods... definitely not as portable as the real thing in Tuva and Mongolia.
    I saw a Discovery Channel special on Mongolia where they showed one being put up then taken down. Simple living at its finest.

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  6. Oh, there are DEFINITELY pros and cons to camping out. I slept in a tent last summer, but I haven't actually camped out "for real" since I was a kid. Might be interesting, though! :)

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  7. @zandria -
    you really should do it "for real" now as an adult... my camping experiences as a kid are completely different from those as an adult! :)

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