Around the Country in 30 Days...The first time always hurts a little

Before we embarked on a month long road-trip around the country and back in 2007, I hadn't camped since girl scouts, which I was only a member of for about a month so you can infer what a fantastic experience that was.

In my perfect camping world there were beautiful and competitively priced, aesthetically pleasing little cabins dotting the country-side all the way to California and back. For the nights we were to spend in National Parks, I dreamed of pulling into perfect remote little campsites in a pick-up truck with a camper top similar to Rocinanthe in John Steinbeck's "Travel's with Charley." Unfortunately this would not be the case and we would have to rough it with our shoestring budget.

Starting from zero we had about $300.00 to spend on gear. If you've checked the REI site lately that doesn't go very far. Instead we turned our cash toward K-mart for the bare necessities: tent, lantern, and mess kit. We stuck to what we had for the rest. We grabbed blankets, lunky suitcases, an old lunch kit cooler, utensils out of the drawer and my dad's weber gas tabletop grill, packing all this and more into the back of a PT cruiser with the backseats pushed down, this was going to be interesting.

If you've camped before you know that blankets do not do the job that a sleeping bag does, and by the time we reached Wyoming we were freezing our asses off and waking up in the middle of the night to huddle closer together, it was quite romantic.

Our gas grill was a bust and had we not promised to return it safely to my father along with his beloved car, we would have left it by the side of the road for the next unknowing camper.

I got used to the tent pretty quickly, as well as the bugs, snakes, racoons, birds, squirrels rambling buffalo and grizzly bears, which were all much scarier in my mind than in reality, although I can’t say enough about heeding bear warnings wherever you go, I had written it off until a ranger at a Yellowstone campground handed us a photo of a bear who had torn the window out of a car and climbed in.

In the end, after the scrapes and scares and one night spent in our car while whistling pacific winds destroyed our tent, we had seen countless beautiful landscapes and met some amazing people, we had tried local foods and adopted a wonderful puppy. Now I can’t imagine a summer with out it.

And so as I sit here in my warm living room with a cup of tea and a serious case of cabin fever watching snow blanket the BQE out my window, I'm looking forward to campfires and creatures howling in the night again. Of course this year, there will be a real sleeping bag involved.