The majority of the camping I have done over the course of my life has not been glamorous. It would definitely not qualify as “glamping.” I did not grow up in a camping family, and these were not the types of trips we took. When I decided to camp, I had to learn how to do it on my own.
The first time I went camping I was 19 or 20. My childhood best friend and I grabbed an old tent her parents had laying around the house, took off for a tucked away part of Florida and figured it out. It was late July and we had no idea what we were doing. I’m still impressed that it was memorable in a good way. We found a great little campsite, cobbled together said tent, rented canoes, explored the crystalline springs and managed not to get completely devoured by mosquitoes. And when driving home along two-lane, backwoods roads through cow pastures, we stumbled across such a field with a patch of the right kind of mushrooms. A win, through and through.