Tag Archives: camping

The Horse I Rode In On

etc., funny things, humor, travel, , , , , , ,

It all started with a vulgar radio ad and turned into an adventure. ([sultry female voice: I wanna ride!])

I really hated the ads, but the premise was intriguing—a weekend horseback camping trip, complete with guide. So Dan and I gathered up Sheila and Harold—another couple who had an interest in horses—and signed up.

(All this was in the days before I abused my back by riding an Arabian horse bareback. The first time I annoyed it was when I had to carry wood up two flights of stairs or freeze to death. But I digress.)

Anyway, we met Larry, our guide, who showed up with four horses and all manner of camping equipment. He set up two tents for us and even found a way to connect my husband’s CPAP machine to power. Then we went out on the trail.

I didn’t have any trouble managing my horse at that point. But Sheila couldn’t get her horse to giddy-up no matter how she kicked, shook the reins, and verbally encouraged it along. It remained stubborn. (Later in life, Sheila and Harold bought horses of their own. Sheila even taught her horse dressage. But I digress again.)

The woods we rode through were as scenic as could be. There were trees that provided cool shade in the heat of the summer day. Unfortunately, Dan’s horse made a game of bumping into tree trunks and whacking his knees. The horses proceeded at a walk or a trot and occasionally broke into a canter. Frankly, I preferred the walk and the canter. The walk gave me time to look around and the canter was exhilarating and didn’t involve bumping up and down quite as much as the bruising trot.

We rode deep into the woods and then the nature, which was all around us, called. Dan had no problems with this (aside from getting down off his horse) and neither did Harold, but Sheila and I had to pee al fresco. (Fortunately, this was a skill I acquired in my youth on backpacking trips. I knew enough to carry tissues and avoid poison ivy. This is one of the only times I can truly be said to have had penis envy. But I digress some more.)

When we returned to camp in the evening, we learned that Larry was also our cook and an old hand at producing good meals over a wood fire. Not to say gourmet meals. This was before glamping was a thing.

Larry also rustled up a fine breakfast as we crawled out of our tents. We ached not just from the (admittedly) less-than-strenuous riding, but also from sleeping on thin tarps that only emphasized the pebbles beneath. We were all more interested in having several cups of very good coffee than getting back on the horses. This, of course, would cause a recurrence of the peeing problem later in the day.

Around the campfire that night, Larry told us how he had started his business and how other campers spent the whole time galloping their horses from one end of a field to the other and back again. No marauding trees or recalcitrant steeds for them.

The next day, we were back to our regular lives and jobs. There were some mementos of our experience. Dan had bashed-up knees. And you should have seen my inner thighs. (Well, no, you shouldn’t.)

While it was a memorable experience, we seriously doubted that we would be repeat customers. We were just too candy-ass. All in all, the adventure was like the Tower of Terror ride at DisneyWorld. It’s not that the horseback adventure was terrifying. It’s just that I’m glad I went on it once, but I’d hesitate to try it again, especially since my back won’t let me.

We Were Girl Scouts Once … and Young

cooking, etc., fun and games, , , , ,

Yes, I know. The main thing that most people associate with Girl Scouts is cookies. And those are certainly one important part of the Girl Scout experience. But they’re far from the only thing, or even the most important.

Officially, cookie sales promote goal setting, decision making, money management, people skills, and business ethics. All the money raised stays with local councils and troops. Nowadays, Girl Scouts no longer sell door-to-door as we did back in the day. Instead, Scouts do phone and online selling, or set up tables in front of stores and in parking lots, often waving signs to attract buyers.

I was a Girl Scout from Brownies through Seniors. And yes, I sold cookies. (Many scouts had their fathers and mothers take the sign-up sheets into work, where coworkers often ordered their goodies. My father wouldn’t do it because, he said, he worked for a government institution and it wouldn’t be proper. But I digress.)

Although the activities that cookie sales funded were many and varied, my favorite – even more than earning merit badges – was camping. I wrote about camping a few years ago. As I described it:

There we were, bedding down on sleeping bags in our tents, the cold, hard ground only a layer of canvas or plastic away. When we sprang out the next morning, our lithe teen forms dressed in green shorts and Vibram-soled boots, we hoisted our backpacks and hiked over hill and dale and rocky trails, singing optimistic songs and breathing deep of the fresh air. We ate granola as we walked.

Later that day, we built a fire and sat upon logs, tree stumps, or little water repellent squares while our dinner cooked slowly, smoke curled around our heads, and mosquitos had their meal before we had ours. Then it was more songs, jokes, stories, and talk till it was time to pour water on the fire, make sure the ashes were cool, and return to our sleeping bags, where, after hours more chat (not the electronic kind, either) we dozed off.

That was, indeed, one style of camping we did. We also went to official Girl Scout camping facilities instead of state parks. I have vivid memories of those adventures, some terrific and others less so.

There was one decidedly memorable state park trip. We set up our tents, which we shared, four scouts per. After dark, we settled in our tents to tell stories and jokes. The girls in my tent read aloud from the book The Hobbit, to the glow of flashlights, lanterns, and the occasional candle (one thing we had learned was how not to set one’s tent on fire and what to do if we did).

A sudden storm came up and turned violent, with rivers of rainwater flowing through our camp, and indeed through our tents, our candle threatening to sail away. As we read the book, we were at a passage describing a storm rife with heavy wind and rain. Every time the storm in the book became more severe, so did the storm in our camp. It was eerie. Eventually, we decided we should stop reading before we were completely washed away. The next morning we had to cope with damp sleeping bags and muddy ground. But that’s what we did. We were scouts.

Other memories were less dramatic and less pleasurable. There was the time we ate “brontoburgers,” hamburger patties wrapped in bacon and then in foil and cooked in the embers of a dying campfire. The next morning we learned a valuable lesson about the inadvisability of eating meat that was less than thoroughly cooked.

Official Girl Scout camps had large tents on raised wooden bases, so we didn’t have to worry about rainwater. We had camping names like Rover and Binky and ones based on the Lord of the Rings (Strider) or MASH (Trapper, Hawkeye), which were popular at the time. We learned songs (some of them from Free to Be (does anyone else remember that?), as well as traditional songs that must have been around since the invention of scouting (“Make new friends, but keep the old./One is silver and the other’s gold.”) The best times were when we became camp counselors, in charge of younger scouts for a month at a time.

Those were the days, never to return. But now some of my sister scouts are grandmothers and I buy my cookies from their offspring.

Camping Then and Now

etc., funny things, humor, travel, , , , ,

There we were, bedding down on sleeping bags in our tents, the cold, hard ground only a layer of canvas or plastic away. When we sprang out the next morning, our lithe teen forms dressed in green shorts and Vibram-soled boots, we hoisted our backpacks and hiked over hill and dale and rocky trails, singing optimistic songs and breathing deep of the fresh air. We ate granola as we walked.

Later that day, we built a fire and sat upon logs, tree stumps, or little water repellent squares while our dinner cooked slowly, smoke curled around our heads, and mosquitos had their meal before we had ours. Then it was more songs, jokes, stories, and talk till it was time to pour water on the fire, make sure the ashes were cool, and return to our sleeping bags, where, after hours more chat (not the electronic kind, either) we dozed off.

We were Girl Scouts and we thought that was the only way to camp. We’d see camping trailers and pop-up campers and elaborate RVs at the edges of the campgrounds nearest the parking lot and think, “That’s not camping! Those people aren’t having the real camping experience. No tents. No sleeping on the ground. Cooking over propane.” We sneered at them (amongst ourselves, being polite little things) and swore we would never indulge in such a travesty of the outdoor experience. It ought to involve at least a little hardship, after all, or where was the challenge?

Since then we have passed the 40- and 50- and even the 60-year marks and our challenges have largely changed. The last time I slept on the ground was well over a decade ago and an outfitter had to bring the tent, because I no longer owned one. Instead of the chirps of birds and rustle of small animals, the sound of our bones creaking and our groans as we tried to raise ourselves to standing positions awakened us. The outfitter cooked the breakfast and we were truly grateful.

Now even that sort of camping, with its modicum of luxury, is beyond me. For one thing, I need an electrical outlet nearby to run my CPAP machine. For another, my ability to climb from a horizontal position on the ground to an upright posture is, to say the least, difficult, as several falls in my home have proven. Some days I can get up and some days I need help. With my luck, I would be camping on one of the latter.

Now I would welcome a pop-up camper. It may have minimalist beds, but they are off the ground. Even a camping trailer would be nice. Those tents never really kept out the rain anyway and, given the choice, I would much rather sleep under a dry blanket than in a sodden sleeping bag.

(I’m still not completely sold on the huge RVs. I think of them more as a way to see the country than as a way to camp. Though they might be good for families with children and grown-ups even older than I.)

And now we have “glamping,” an ugly portmanteau word of “glamor” and “camping” that touts luxury and style. While glamping you can sleep in comfortable lodges or huge tents fitted out with full-sized beds. With throw pillows, even, in one of the photos I’ve seen. Wikipedia says it offers “the luxuries of hotel accommodation alongside ‘the escapism and adventure recreation of camping.'” “Resort-style services” may be available as you bask in Bali or indulge in a photo safari. In other words, camping for spoiled rich people. I know the rustic-looking cabins with all the comforts of the Waldorf promise a lot, but I can’t help feeling a little like I did as a naive and sturdy Girl Scout.

That’s not camping.