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Traveling with a Recreation Vehicle (RV) cannot be described as camping. It is merely a way of taking the creature comforts of your home to a commercial campground' that has hookups for electricity, water and sewage disposal. There one meets other RVers in an organized paddock.

Camping' means getting away from civilization, not bringing it with you. If you walk, bike, or canoe you can leave the beaten track, enter a wilderness that has no modern conveniences. On those overnight stays one camps', perhaps with a tent, perhaps in a waterproof sleeping-bag under a homemade shelter or an upturned canoe. That's camping.'

Camping with a tent isn't always convenient so it takes a little more than driving a monstrous bus from one gas station to the next. We camped in adjacent riverside meadows as we canoed the length of the Thames in England. Eating a meal we prepared over a stove or a fire was something special for even if we burned the potatoes the tasted wonderfully after a day of hard work paddling. Turning in to the tent for a sound sleep was no trouble at all. However, rising in the morning, in those days before having a flysheet, meant being very careful not to touch the tent over your head. That would release a torrent of dew through the light cotton. Breakfast was a leisurely affair to allow the tent to dry out before being packed. It was all part of the fun of real camping.

Camping in the Tetons meant crossing Lake Jenny and walking up into the mountains, a place that no RVer has probably ever seen. Camping that night was very different from the banks of the Thames. We had to carefully store all our edibles in a place that bears couldn't get to. In the end we hung our supplies on the end of a thin fallen tree pushed out over a steep cliff, carefully secured by weighty rocks. We saved our supplies but lost our lunchtime snacks in our packs hung from trees to pesky chipmunks who gnawed there way directly through the canvas to get at the trail mix. It was all part of real camping.

I am sorry for RVers. They never experience camping.

Learn more about this author, John Graham.
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