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Which provides for a better camping experience: RVs or tent-camping?
Results so far:
| RVs | 33% | 329 votes | Total: 993 votes | |
| Tents | 67% | 664 votes |
RVs
by James Hammell
Created on: November 09, 2009
Tenting is marvelous if you enjoy setting up the tent while being drenched, as the heavens above release a torrent of rain down upon you. And the wind howls chilling your damp carcass to the bone. Pound in the ground stakes with a wet slippery hammer bending the crap out of them as you hit one boulder after another; each of them placed just under the soft earth to antagonize you by some forest ogre. Finally the poles are in place and you raise the tent and the large puddle of water that was laying on it runs through the mesh windows into the inside of the tent that is now shivering in the cold wind. Of course this means that when you place your sleeping-bag inside; the bottom of it will soak up the water like a thirsty sponge.
While the RVer sits under his awning trying to not laugh loudly at your predicament while attempting to concentrate on the thick delicious tender steaks on the barbecue in front of him. Believe me he much appreciated your efforts, if only for the entertainment value.
Now you go about the task of attaching the canopy of blue tarps to trees, picnic tables and the rack on the canopy of your pick-up truck. Soaked to the bone you jump into your truck to race down to where they keep the firewood. Oops you forgot that you had anchored the tarp to the canopy.
Now your neighbor in the RV is rolling around on the matt under his awning clutching his aching sides laughing his guts out. When he composes himself his wife brings him two beers and an umbrella from inside the warm lit-up, dry trailer with two slides. He offers you a bud and invites you and your family inside to dry off and warm up. You accept the beer and down it but decline the offer of comfort which your damp family quite willingly and graciously accept. Now the small audience in the RV has grown as you struggle to raise your tattered rag of a tarp. It is now that you notice the minions of mosquitoes that are now feasting on any exposed portion of damp cold flesh.
Finally camp is set up; you've managed to gather a couple of armfuls of damp heavy firewood. You manage to miraculously start a fire, not without pouring your cherished bottle of vodka and a bottle of rubbing alcohol over the firewood first though. Because you are avid and a traditionalist you build a rack with soaking wet branches over the fire and place a pot of water on top of it for washing purposes as you stand cooking your dinner of pork and beans on the two burner camp-stove. There is a of flash of light and a clap of thunder. Wow that is close and you look up at the umbrella you are holding with its metal shaft and tip in a raging lightening storm. Distracted by all this you fail to see the branch rack catch fire, the pot full of water fall over and put out the fire that took you an hour and a half to start.
Yes all this will make great memories when you are older and wiser as you sit in the warmth of your 32 foot trailer with two slides eating a tender steak and drinking a good bottle of wine.
Tenting is for the young and the masochistic, thank you.
Learn more about this author, James Hammell.
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Tents
by Charles Bobbitt
Created on: September 03, 2008
If your purpose in camping is to learn to appreciate and respect Nature and not just enjoy it, leave the RV behind. It is love with a hitch. It gives the shallow pleasures of a dalliance, but not the deep intimacy of true love. Tent camping is a lifetime commitment. RV camping is a one-night stand.
Allow me, if you will, to present the morning after.
You wake up with the dawn, your mind still reeling from the passion of the night before. You are enticed out of your portable bed by the rosy glow of the sky coyly peeking through the curtains. You make up your mind to take a serene walk through the woods and commune with Nature on this clear, cool summer morning. You mark your progress through the silvery dew of Nature's velvet meadow by the damp, dark wake trailing behind. You hear the morning birds serenading you to the accompaniment of a gurgling brook. The first flush of love.
So far, so good.
You stop to take it in. Your heart yearns to absorb every detail the scene around you the glimpse of a squirrel, the sound of the woodpecker on a hollow tree, the furzy smell of the evergreens. You beg to see beyond the surface, to stare deeply, lovingly into the fresh, pure face of Nature.
Slowly, almost imperceptibly, like dew rising from the grass, shy Nature begins to lift her veil. Your heart pounds with expectation. The sun, gathering its courage, will soon make an appearance over the tips of the trees. In the glow his face, Nature's hidden fruits will be revealed, stretched out naked before you.
As you hold your breath in anxious expectation, your attention gets diverted. Itching ankles alert you that the mosquitoes have not yet gone to bed. A few wasted swats later, your try to refocus for this, the moment of ultimate passion when you and Nature will at last unite.
But it is hopeless.
The spell has been broken. You suddenly realize that the silent rapture in which you imagined yourself waiting is not silent at all. It is, in fact, rather noisy. The mosquitoes have migrated upwards, and are now buzzing around your ears; the duet of the lark and brook has been overpowered by a chorus of cicadas that could rival a Wagnerian opera for volume and dissonance; that fool of a woodpecker is still beating his brains out on the hollow tree; and something apparently very large (a bear?) is noisily shuffling through the dead leaves just out of view.
Before you can come to grips with the possible horrors intimated by the beast in the woods, your mind shifts downward to your lower extremities. The water from the soggy sod has soaked through your sneakers, and your feet are now wet and uncomfortable. You long to sit down and remove your shoes, but all around you is either too wet, too hard and knobby, or too close to the source of that shuffling noise, which is now alarmingly silent.
While your mind struggles to cope with this new situation, you suddenly become aware of a burning sensation on your neck. The summer sun has lost its mood of warm welcome, and has instead become more irritable than a terrier with a toothache. He now seems determined on driving you out of his domain and back to where you came from. "Stupid bipeds from the city," he seems to mutter.
Nature, you muse, must be suffering PMS.
What do you do in this case? If you are staying in an RV, the answer is simple. You leave a note on the pillow saying, "It was great, but I've got to be going now. See you around." You retreat into your RV, lock the door, crank up the air conditioner, toss a breakfast burrito into the microwave, turn on Oprah, and wait until Nature gets in a better mood.
Tent camping doesn't give you this option. You have little choice but to experience the full range of Nature's temperament from the vestal vulnerability of the speckled fawn to the uncompromising fury of the summer storm. You get the joy of a grassy knoll in late afternoon, and the pain of a root between your shoulder blades at 3:12 in the morning. With a tent, you don't have the option of avoiding Nature, and so you learn adjust yourself to Nature. You grow to understand, appreciate, and respect Nature in all its forms.
Therefore, only with tent camping do you truly get to know Nature. And can there be true love without true knowledge?
Learn more about this author, Charles Bobbitt.
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