This must be the week to post RV shots..
We’ve been tent campers for as long as I can remember; the kids have always been a part of it and they’ve grown to look forward to camping season. I invested in a pretty good tent: well made, multiple rooms, efficient ventilation and even multiple ceiling fans. However, last year we undertook our most ambitious/foolhardy camping trip to date; ten straight days in the tent with three kids, in Cape Cod by a salt marsh, during the height of the summer (read hot, humid and close proximity to bugs). While a great trip, that experience led to the decision that it’s probably time to move it up a notch if we’re going to continue along this path and all remain on speaking terms. So we decided to transition to a trailer.
Well, my “rig” doesn’t really compare to the photo in Ken’s post from yesterday, but I’m not ready to take that leap into full-on RVing yet (and I’m sure my friendly banker whole-heartedly agrees with that assessment). We wanted to stay as close to “camping” as possible, so the kids still get the full outdoors experience, while making the packing, set-up and those inevitable rainy nights a little more tolerable; so we opted for a pop-up tent trailer. The inaugural trip was this past weekend and I have to say that we made the right choice. These things are like a camping Transformer… It’s amazing how efficiently everything folds up and how much room there is once the trailer is fully expanded.
We went to MacGregor Point Provincial Park, near Kincardine, Ontario. This was a really great park, and even had a pull-through site so I didn’t have to back the trailer up- I’m still working on that… One of the natural features of MacGregor Point is a population of carnivorous Pitcher Plants. It would have been cooler if they’d been 10 feet tall instead of 10 inches, but hey, any plant that “eats” bugs still has a certain cool factor about it. We located a patch of these vegetative terrors near our campsite, but never did find any that had managed to catch a bug. Oh well, maybe next time.
I kind of felt as though I’d punched the environment in the eye with this move- we’ve gone from a few battery powered fans and a cooler to air conditioning, a furnace and a fridge (not to mention trading in my relatively fuel-efficient Jetta for a considerably thirstier Pathfinder in order to tow the works)- but I think the fact that we’re continuing to build an appreciation for activity, nature and the outdoors in our kids during the majority of our vacations makes up for at least some of it. I’m also looking at rigging up solar panels to run some of the appliances and work off a little more of the guilt- that’s a work in progress and likely the subject or a future Wired How-To Wiki piece…
