Camping: Then and Now

Back in our earlier years, when Bob was a young teacher and I was still in college as an undergrad, we couldn't afford to take vacations like Bob's parents did it when he was young. In my family, we did small camping trips and so one summer we decided to go to the Rocky Mountains and camp along the way. We had such a good time camping and sightseeing.

This was in the early 1980s. We drove from Columbia (Missouri) and stayed in the Great Sand Dunes, Mesa Verde, and the Rocky Mountain National Parks. It was the first of the stories we told for years and years of us being chased by bird-sized mosquitos in the Great Sand Dunes. We weren't able to put up our tent and had to go further down the road to set it up. We also experienced a snowstorm in July at Monarch Mountain in the Rockies. We had to stay there for two nights. It was our first true experience of how wonderful our national park system is and we knew that we wanted to see and do more!

We camped throughout Missouri, where we live, and did a fun camping experience with our family to Tennessee when we went to the World's Fair in Knoxville. We loved the beautiful campground. This is when we started to sour on tent camping, as it rained a lot while we were there and our tent leaked, despite our efforts to waterproof it before we left. We had sunny days but wet and miserable nights.

In 1985 our daughter was born and we took her camping her very first spring. She was a good camping baby, enjoyed playing on her blanket and with her toys. We camped right up through her elementary years, until one fateful event in Colorado that cut our camping completely off.

Unbeknownst to us, Ashley was suffering from altitude sickness. She grew more and more dehydrated, and while we coaxed her to drink more, it made her feel sick, so she didn't drink as much as we thought she would. We were at the Garden of the Gods when we saw how sick she was. So we drove down the mountain to a pottery place where we could do an indoor tour. We thought cooling her down would make her want to drink more. Before the tour started though, Ashley passed out completely. An ambulance was called. I sat in the front seat and Bob followed in the car. She was admitted to the hospital and ended up staying there for two nights while they watched her. She took fluids through an IV. Bob went back to the campground on his own and packed everything up. It had rained, things were ruined and it was just a miserable thing to do. After that time, our vacations were radically different.

A few years ago, I started talking to Bob about camping again. He wasn't really into it and I didn't press it. Lately, though, with all the Covid-19 issues, and with me being home for 4 straight months, I was feeling the loss of our traveling and started looking into camping again. I found some information on converting our CR-V into a camper, and I showed Bob those plans. He said he'd give it a go, but predicted it would be a "one and done" situation.