Roughing It Part 1: Executive Decision

This past weekend we went camping. Well, we tried to go camping. It took me a week to get ready; camping with a baby takes extra preparation and foresight. Luckily I'm the organized type, so I had several lists going: "Food," "Gear," "Baby Gear," "Clothing." I was also checking the weather for Lancaster, NH almost constantly. Lancaster was our destination, a little town way up in Coos County (for those of you who aren't of a Granite State of Mind, it is pronounced "coo-os"). Lancaster isn't too far from Canada, or Vermont, or Maine for that matter, its way up at the top of the state where things get so narrow that you aren't far from anything, yet far away from everything.

I was feeling pretty confident about my prep work and encouraged by stories of other families who had successfully camped with babies, and the weather looked promising. My husband and I haven't done much "car-camping" (the kind where you drive up to a tent site that is already equipped with picnic table and fire pit) we're more of the backpacking-camping type, where you hike all day, pitch a tent and stay the night, then hike out the next day. Unfortunately, the backpacking kind of camping does not work well with infants.

The thing is when you're backpacking you're prepared for and willing to accept some level of discomfort, however, with tent camping it becomes harder to accept discomfort as you are surrounded by constant reminders that you could be somewhere more comfortable: the car that could drive you home, the bathhouse shower doesn't quite get you clean, the campground store that is almost like your pantry. When we go backpacking we have huge success and a great time, the one time we went car-camping in Arizona, Mark ended up sleeping in the car, and I laid awake sleepless in the tent; we packed up everything at 5am and started driving home. Maybe it is the fact that you don't physically exert yourself to get to the tent site, or that instead of gather firewood for an hour you simply pick up a pre-packaged bundle for $5 at the "general store," there's always very little sleep involved when car-camping as you never get to that I'm-so-tired-I'll-sleep-anywhere state.

So when we arrived at Roger's Campground on Friday afternoon and were directed to our campsite via highlighted map, we had low expectation. Unfortunately, they were not low enough. Each tent sight was approximately 10x20, sardined in next to each other with little to no trees between each spot. We were surrounded on all sides by other campers, who's idea of roughing it involved stringing Christmas lights from the screen tent they had used to enclose their picnic table. These people had squeeze every possible item of camping paraphernalia onto a a 10x20 space: it was a regular Cabelas in-store display (for those of you who aren't familiar with Cabelas it's like the Kittery Training Post on steroids).

At that moment, as we stood facing the barren 10x20 sardine can that was tent site #44, we made an executive

decision: we are getting a motel room.