Don’t call it camping!

I know there’s a difference between tent camping and RV camping, but I wasn’t prepared for how much tent campers hate when RVers use the word camping. Why so much hate and judgement? We’re all enjoying the great outdoors, exploring new places, having new experiences.

Not a “real” campfire

A friend of mine is an avid tent camper and he made fun of me at first that it’s not “really camping” if you’re not sleeping on the ground, eating soggy PB sandwiches or cooking over a campfire. I laughed it off and agreed we’re not really roughing it, but it’s still camping. It’s still space at a campground, we still get eaten alive by bugs, and even with camping showers, we’re still sort of dirty most of the time. But the comments I’ve seen on some blogs are so hateful!

I tent camped a couple times as a kid and an adult and my parents had a pop-up camper when I was growing up. I remember how miserable it was it was to wake up with a layer of dew over everything. I remember the discomfort of sticks and rocks under my sleeping bag. I hated having to crawl out of a tent.

We considered a pop-up trailer at first. I liked the idea of the breeze blowing through, but Buddy has such separation anxiety that I realized pretty quickly he’d tear right through the screen if he could see me outside. He’s destroyed the screen door in the trailer going both in and out to get to me, I can only imagine the havoc he’d wreak on a tent or pop-up!

Here’s Buddy!

If you think sleeping on the ground in a sleeping bag makes you a better person, that’s a dumb moral high ground to claim for yourself. Our camper is our home base for all the exploring we do, it’s not where we spend most of our time. I enjoy coming home to comfortable bed and not being at the mercy of disgusting showers or pit toilets. But if you like those things, good for you.

I’ll continue to call it camping, thank you very much.