Are you a traveler or camper? Or maybe both?
For us, it’s mix of both. Over the last several years, I started to nearly hate travelling. Not all kinds of travelling though; more specifically airplane travel. Going on long ice hockey road trips as a kid gave me my fair share of long car rides that I can tolerate. It’s just my luck that many plane trips, that were supposed to only be 4 or 5 hours total, ended up taking 13 or 14 hours just to get home. I hate the idea of going somewhere, especially for fun, only to have to burn 2 full days on travel. Even for some recent business trips, I ended up getting stuck somewhere or really delayed. Thus, I’ve grown tired of it.
We’re from the Washington D.C. area. That means, traffic congestion, bigger airports, and troublesome security procedures, which only adds to the total travel time. Most times it takes about an hour just to walk out of Dulles Airport long after the flight has landed. It’s exhausting and not fun. I don’t care what’s on the other end of the destination, it almost feels not worth the trip in order to get there.
Kayak Chris Hammock Camping and Gram Weenie at Yosemite National Park
Gram Weenie is different. (See her rebuttal comment below.) She’ll travel 24 hours to get back home. Not me. On our RV trip, we’ve been doing shorter span drives, usually only requiring one stop for gas or a bathroom break. The 3-4 hour range at most is tolerable. (Somehow I have ended up doing all the driving every weekend!) 😉 But, that’s OK, if we take short trips. She may be more in this journey, not for the camping aspect, but for the destinations. I’m more in it for the process. That’s probably a good combination.
Fresh snapper and fresh shrimp cooking over a campfire grill.
I’m more of a camper. I don’t mind all of the parts that go into getting a campsite up and ready (even the dirty stuff). I love having the ability to cook over a fire or outside on a grill daily. I can be relatively happy where I am. I’m not driven deep down to move all the time.
For me, it’s more about the present and the process. I’m not thinking ahead to some other ultimate destination. I’m an avid hammock camper. I have a lot of friends who are ultralight backpackers and hikers. They are in it mostly for the hiking. I only hike in order to get to where I’m going to camp!
A mobile lifestyle can easily nurture either aspects of what you might identify with more. So are you a traveler or a camper?
4 thoughts on “Traveler or Camper?”