Remember that friend of mine who wants to go camping? The thing about him is he would tell me all kinds of things he would really like to do, but we usually don't end up doing anything about it. In fact, I even drove 500 miles this one time, just to meet up with him and go camping, and we still ended up not doing it.
After all these years, I basically know that when he tells me something the first time, it's usually just him sharing his ideas for adventure. However, if he tells me again the second time, then I'll know he's actually serious about it. In fact, were he to call me up and tell me yet again, for the third time, especially when he is telling me he's locking in specific dates, that's when I know that we're actually going through with it. Maybe. But that's what happened last night. He called me up, and now, Operation Don't Get Eaten By a Bear is apparently on!
Luckily for me, I still have a few weeks to find all the camping gear from the last time we said we were going but never did. So, at least the cost of equipment for this little "jaunt" should be minimal. This would still mark the first time I would be camping though, and we would be doing it basically in the beginning of summer. So I am feeling a bit of anxiety about how to approach this. For example, I wonder how bad are mosquitoes this time of the year?
Location is not nailed down yet. We am looking through anything from the Appalachian mountains, all the way to the literal beach, and everything else in between. Oh, and now is probably a good time to dust off some of my gear from my car camping days. I know we'll literally be roughing it when we get there, but that doesn't mean the car camping stuff won't be useful while traveling back and forth.
I'll admit that I am a bit more apprehensive this time around, because well, my health is now a bit worse off than when we made the previous attempt. However, it should be OK, and worst case, we agreed we can always retreat back to some hotel somewhere (or me sleeping in my car at least).
April 22nd, 2026 at 03:16 pm 1776871014
April 24th, 2026 at 04:38 pm 1777048681