Starting Over - Getting reacquainted

[ForestCreature]

Being gone from the board almost a year, I was surfing thru the members list. Seems to be many members who either joined after I left or changed their names. Got to thinking that we need a new intro to each other thread & hopefully get people posting once again or even for the first time....So everyone feel free to chime in and reintroduce yourself .
 
  I guess I'll go first ....
  Hi, I am a  campaholic ...DH and I have been camping forever. As most we started in a tent, evolving into the Aliner about 5 yrs ago. I love cooking over the campfire, day hiking with my camera and ending the day with a warm fire and a glass of wine or 2 or 3. We love State and National forest camping, but this past yr it's been hard to get enough time to go where the forests are so we've been exploring State parks in our area within a couple hrs drive. Found a couple we like & will return to, and many more that we diddn't like. Looking forward to next camping season & getting back to the forests where we belong!
 

[Cheryl]

Like ForestCreature, we are camping finatics. I grew up in a camping family (My father was in the Air Force - we had to vacation CHEAP) but my DH had never camped until after we got married. He's never been west of the Big Muddy!!!! He now is hooked and our retirement plans revolve around fulltiming. We've camped with our kids since my DD was 3 months old (she is now in her last year of college). Our DS doesn't go with us all the time but what can you expect from a 16 year old. We started camping with a hand-me-down tent and after numerous years finally bought a '76 Coleman Valley Forge and thought we were in heaven. Used it for 6 years and sold it for what we paid for it. We then bought a '95 Coleman Cape Cod with the hard sides (tenting only on the bed ends) with A/C and LOVED it. Used it well and just sold it this past summer and bought an '05 Rockwood Roo 21Superslide. We camped several times in the new Roo and love it. We're already planning trips for next year and may try to squeeze in one more trip this year. We love meeting up with old friends from this board and making new ones along the way. When DS is done with college somewhere around 2010 we plan to hit the road and finally see all the great places you all have described and camped in! Hope to meet you all somewhere down the road.
Cheryl
In the panhandle of Maryland
'97 Ford F150 extended cab
'05 Rockwood RooSS

[campincrew]

My Turn!  :tent: DW and I started camping together before we were married.  We tented it for 8 years until I could convince her to seriously look at PU's.  We try to get out once a month-more if possible and every vacation we camp somewhere. We almost NEVER use the stove inside, most of our meals are cooked over the fire-even breakfast.  Burgers and dogs...not on our camp diet. Since we moved to South Eastern Virginia, we have fallen in love with camping at the Outer Banks of North Carolina.  Swimming, sunning and just messin' around with the 3 kids and dog, make for a great time. :p

[CampNfan]

Hi, My name is Rick and I too like Marcy am a Campaholic....It started at a young age. My Dad worked for the railroad and he was raising a Family of 5. So not much Cash for a trip to Europe. He had a friend he worked with, a single guy who wanted to go camping. He bought all kinds of equipment from the Sears and Roebucks catalog and went camping. His first trip out he ran into a Family with a Winnebago. Right then and there he figured out he wanted one of them! When he got home he sold all of that brand new camping gear to my Dad for 100 bucks. We got a 12-man Coleman canvas tent, 2 coolers a Coleman stove, Coleman lantern, a fold up table. And a bunch of other stuff I really don't remember. But from what I remember he had spent a lot more than my Dad paid him. He was a good friend to my Dad. We took off for our first Family camping trip to Point Lookout state park in Md. We had a blast. We where not new to camping, we had relatives in Pa. we camped with when we visited them. We camped at Kelly Pines, and Beaver Meadows in the Alleghenies Mountains. But after Dad got all the camping gear we went all the time. Had many of neighborhood campouts in the back yard growing up with that big old tent. All the kids would come over and by morning we might still have a couple kids there who didn't get too scared and go home. Anyway it all started with that tent and I have camped ever since in one way or another from on the ground to a hammock to a cot to a popup. Come on 5er.....or class A.

[cyclone]

I'll join in:  I'm one of those single campers but always camp with family and/or friends.  I grew up camping, first in a tent then a pop-up which my dad tells me was a 70's era Wheelcamper.  I spent a couple of summers as a camp counselor, too; one in a tent on a platform.  My camping days went through several years hiatus; then my sister and I decided we "needed" to camp.  We tented for about 10 years and this year FINALLY got off the ground!   I love the pu; have not cooked in it.  I guess some habits are hard to break, but I still like cooking outside.  I've learned so much from assorted camping boards and even got a dutch oven this year after reading so many threads about that.  I camp mainly in state parks or coe cg's.  Give me some trees!  When I'm not camping, I work in a hotel.  Believe me ~ the last thing I want to do on vacation is go to another hotel.  And, I would gladly camp with PUT friends (and TPUC friends, too) any time!

[chasd60]

Hi all,
 I didn't camp too much as a kid. My dad felt he was doing enough camping at work so he didn't like to do it too much when he was home. He was in the infantry in the Army for 20 years and spent a year in Korea in a tent and two years in Vietnam in a tent. He said they didn't allow popups over there.
 I got into camping about 10 years ago, I went around the US with a Geo Metro and 2 teanaged boys. Nine thousand miles in 19 days.......
 
  I camped several times with my daughter after that and we went to Mammoth Caves in KY and a few other tenting trips.
 My wife didn't want anything to do with a tent or sleeping on the ground so she didn't go with us. I ordered a popup in February of 2001 and my wife really didn't believe me until I came home from work one day with a brand new pickup!! She at that point said "you must be serious about buying a camper?" I sure was, my daughter and I drove to Wisconsin to pick the camper up in April 2001 and from there we went to Kentucky and on to Myrtle Beach SC.
 
 Three seasons in the popup including the 2002 PUT rally in TN and about 6000 miles we decided to move up to a hybrid. DW really likes this one!! We are planning to buy a motorhome for winter escapes when we retire (20 more years).
 
  Right now it is the three of us and an occasional grandchild or two.
 We have made some friendships on this board that have grown into friendships off the board as well. We made cyberfriends that will hopefully be lifelong friends that we spend time with every year or so doing what we all love...................CAMPING!!
 
  BTW, I repeated the trip around the US in the summer of 2003 with my daughter, a nephew, my truck and a tent.
 
  Charlie

[Campaholics]

We are the Campaholics.  There was a short break in my camping between Boy Scouts and how to keep vacation costs down, about 28 years.  We started when the kids were five and seven, with a borrowed tent.  After sixteen seasons of tent camping, we moved up to a PU four years ago.

We do most of our cooking on a Coleman stove or in a Dutch Oven.  We experiment all winter with new recipies for the camping cook book.

We almost always camp in State Parks.  Within in a three hour drive we are blessed with a large number of excellent parks in Northern Illinois and Southern Wisconsin.  We like the wooded sites, a bit of seclusion from the next sites, the hiking trails, naturalist programs (when the kids were growing up they never caught on that school was in).

Now, it's time to dream about mid May and the start of a new camping season.

Regards,
The Campaholics

[OC Campers]

My dh and I both grew up camping as kids.  When we got married it was a given that we would camp with each other and take our kids when they came along.  We always tent camped but kept saying "some day we will be able to afford a popup"  When our 3rd kidlet came along we new we had outgrown our tent.  We were both also getting tired of sleeping on the ground.  We bought our popup, a 2001 Coleman Westlake in April of 2001.  We have tried to camp at least once a month ever since.  We just recently moved to Northern California from the Southern "sunny" part of the state.  We now have a lot more camping possibilities available to us.  In fact we are going on our first weekend camping trip since we moved here.

Jacqui

[ForestCreature]

Great replies!  
     
 Starting to look like most that have replied so far are "born"  with the camping bug!  It's great to be able to pass that down to the next generation, our kids!  maybe camping is genetic
 

[PopupSgt]

I  have never camped in my life until about 4 years ago.  I was being placed on furlow with my past company for 1 week, which was a week w/o pay & a very small unemployment check.  Some friends of mine were going camping at Cumberland Falls to ease their minds of the week w/o pay and they invited my familiy along.
We purchased all of the typical camping items, which included a tent, and conducted our first camping adventure there.  You should have seen us trying to setup a tent for the first time as a greenhorn :banghead:.  The trip went fantastic, well except when a tornadoe came thru the valley and a tree fell on the tent when my DW was sleeping inside, luckily it missed her but she was shaken up for some time.
Well the bug stayed with us and we tent camped almost every weekend until a couple weekends of rain storms and one in particular of wanting some fresh air and leaving the rain fly off, I don't have to explain what happened :swear:, I can tell you I was not the :cool: dad or DH after that.  Well needless to say the DW was thru with tent camping and we bought our first popup.  We loved camping even more, well until we experience the mechanical issues we had with the popup, which soured our happiness of our camper :screwy: but not our love of camping.
Well now we are into the home stretch of crossing to the 1/2 dark side with a hybrid and loving camping even more, we especially love to camp with dear friends that we have met on this board.

Corey

[sandykayak]

Hi, my name is Sandy and I'm a campaholic.  I'm another single camper.

I've been at it since Girl Scouting days.  I own a bunch of tents, had a '95 VW EuroVan camper with the poptop, and now have a small Jayco popup.  There are always tradeoffs.  Still haven't found the perfect setup and probably never will.

I'd love to try an A-frame but the packed size frightens me - I'm 5'0" and I so love the airy feeling of my 360 popup when it's extended.

I plan to do some extended RVing after I retire (still a few years to go) and hope I will still find that the PU meets most of my needs.  I can sleep in the minivan for overnighters.

[Kelly]

Hi  :W   I'm Kelly and ... aw shucks you all know the drill here!  

Lessee my dad got rich one summer ~ don't ask how.  I certainly don't want to know!!  I was about 11 and he bought a new truck, a new boat and a new tent.  My parents had camped very early in their marriage and then took a break til that summer.  For the next 6 or 7 years I camped with my family and with Girl Scouts.

Then I took a break from camping.  The kids' dad wasn't much of a camper, but after a couple tent trips and a trip with a rented PU I convinced him it was time to buy one of our own.  We took a couple road trips with it and a few weekend trips.

Now you can count me among the single campers ~ single mom with kids!  This past summer the kids and I got in 14 nights of camping ~ 5 in a tent and the rest in the PU before I had to give it up.  Unfortunately for me when the marriage ended he got the PU ... long story.  Fortunately for me I got all the camping gear and a lead on a new-to-me PU thanks to some great people on this board.  So I won't be PU-less for long!

The kids love camping, especially when we go with my parents ... who still camp in their 31' Class C.  I'm having a great time teaching them the things my parents taught me and exploring different parts of our fine state and country with them.  We've only cooked inside the PU once.  I still feel like the PU is a tent on wheels and do many of the same things I learned to do while tent camping.  I try to keep everything very simple and was delighted to find this summer that I really did not need that much "stuff" to have a great time and to share that quality time with the kids.

I think Marcy is right.  Camping is a genetic thing![/font]

[JonesFamilyJayco]

My camping introduction was with my church to Carolina Hemlocks National Forest Campground in the NC Mountians.  We camped each summer and I continued this during and after college.  I began tent camping with my son first and later my daughter.  We moved up into a used Jayco Eagle 8 pop up that was and still is a lot of fun.  I have really enjoyed both camping and working to modify our little camper.

Our new camping experience is camping at NASCAR events.  My son and I have camped twice at Lowes Motor Speedway and hope to go to other race tracks next year.

In order to get my wife to camp with us more often, I have begun looking at small travel trailers.  I too like the extra room and the bath room will be nice.  Plan on keeping my pop-up for true camping to state and federal parks, but use the travel trailer for longer, all-family vacations.  The 8' camper becomes a little crowded with all 4 of us after a couple of days.

[GeneF]

I never thought about camping until I was given a 1969 tent camper.  Once the family used it, we were hooked.

We have been camping for about 17 years now with a lot of laughs around many a campfire and have traveled to about 40 states.

We took a cross country trip with the kids in 1991.  They still remember a lot about it.

Over the years we have gone through three more popups, each one a little bigger.

Camping with the kids was always fun but like all good things, it had to come to an end.  

So, dw and I bought a Kiwi 23B, retired and are enjoying ourselves.  We just returned from a 62 day, 10,823 mile trip.  We spent a lot of time visiting and renewing old friendships on the way.

Sadly, I put the Kiwi in storage on Saturday until next year.

[tlhdoc]

Hi Gene,

WELCOME BACK!!!