Random Holidays

If you love camping (and why wouldn’t you) you know that it’s the kind of activity where you take the good with the bad. The joy of the outdoors, nature, fresh air and sleeping under the stars can just as often be summed up as voluntary torture. Sometimes the weather doesn’t cooperate, the equipment fails and the ground is a cold, hard reminder of the comfort in which you could be sleeping if you’d just had the sense to stay home. Of course, had you stayed home, you’d be missing out on all that nature. The mosquitoes, spiders, tics, sudden storms, poison ivy, ah nature. Think of all the lonely vermin.

Lucky for them, there are those who won’t let things like crippling diseases, poisonous insects, vicious animals or life-threatening weather deter them from a camping trip. Goodness, no. Those things (and the great stories that result from epic adventures) are what makes a trip worthwhile. As long as the story can end with, “and that’s how I narrowly escaped certain death,” it’s all good. A couple wet matches, a sharp knife and some twine are all these die-hards need (or want) to make it through the trip. And if need be, they can make their own twine.

The polar opposite of the people who like a bit of dengue fever, F4 tornados, white-out blizzard conditions and one wet match and a roll of duct tape to get by on are the urban campers. These are the folks who include an RV in their camping supplies. Nothing says roughing it like a luxuriously appointed fiberglass shell traveling at an oh-so-green 12 miles per gallon from one destination to another in order to share the, um, wilderness experience with 40 strangers. The only things that can ruin the great outdoors experience for these folks is poor satellite TV reception and a shortage of hot, running water. Can you blame them? Who wants to miss an episode of Survivor or I’m a Celebrity, be Disgusted (name changed to more accurately reflect content)? After all, why immerse yourself fully in nature when the flat screen TV mounted on your camper’s wall can simulate the environment you’re currently parked in?

So there are your fringes, but what about those of us in the middle? Well, if you’re like me, you try to find a balance between being removed from all that electric beeping nonsense that seems to dominate our daily lives but not quite auditioning to be a Bear Grylls stand-in. You don’t need the RV, but you won’t turn your nose up at a tent that doesn’t leak. You accept that there will be bugs, but you include a small bottle of insect repellent in your backpack. You left the goose-liver pate at home but allowed for some high-end perishables at the start of the trip before you’ll be forced to turn to your freeze-dried edibles. You may have even packed a couple beers. Your mileage may vary.

For us “tweeners,” there’s a comfortable spot between tortured and pampered. The criteria is usually pretty simple. If you can carry it in on your back, it’s fair game. That means being pretty selective about what amenities are of sufficient importance to haul so many of us have narrowed down our list of absolute must-haves. Mine can be summed up as great food and great sleep.

The good food part is actually easy to accomplish. I cheat. I always try to go camping with my buddy who happens to be a chef who missed his calling in life. This guy could turn week-old road-kill into something palatable if he set his mind to it. The second part, great sleep, requires me to actually haul something; an air mattress bed.

Now, I’m not talking about having a Select Comfort Sleep Number bed air lifted to our planned camp site or anything. Mind you, I own one and if it were in the budget, I might try to find a way to get it there. But money isn’t that plentiful, unfortunately. What I am talking about is a self-inflating camping air mattress. If it were up to me, the guy or gal who invented these things would be up for a Nobel Prize.

Back in the day (when you get to my age you’re allowed to use that phrase) comfortable sleeping meant spreading your sleeping bag over a cozy foam sleeping pad. These things weren’t comfortable or cozy, doing little more for me than keeping me lightly insulated from the cold ground and spreading the pain caused by a lump or rock over a larger area of my body. I think that’s supposed to be better. My camping pals and I called these things better-than-nothing pads because they were a sliver of a step above bare-ground sleeping. When camping air mattress beds came out they were bulky affairs and prone to puncturing or deflating. Larger than their foam counterparts, they were hardly worth substituting for the limited additional comfort they afforded. They were also a pain to inflate.

Of course, technology marches on and air mattress beds made specifically for camping became much better. Materials became far more durable and self-inflation construction made these things a breeze to setup. The final step towards perfection came in the form of compaction. Modern camping air mattresses squeeze down as small as or smaller than their foam cousins. All in all, you’d be nuts not to include one of these in your camping kit.

Even those with delicate backs and sensitive joints can probably find an air mattress bed they can not only hike with, but will find downright luxurious compared to what they might have endured in the past. But, if you are the type who likes to drive and park at a camp site, you can take luxury to obscene levels. Custom air mattress beds designed specifically for certain model pickup truck beds and SUVs make for a fabulous night of sleep. Relieved of the burden of having to carry your bed on your back and blessed with the convenience of car adapters for automatic inflation, the sky really is the limit. If so inclined, you can be sleeping on 4, 6 or even 8 inches of comfy air.

As for the Rambo’s out there who are poo-pooing the idea and thinking I should pull up my panties and grow some hair on my chest, you go right ahead and feel that way. In fact, I’d like to have you along on my next camping trip. Should a bear attack, one of us will be well rested enough to run away. The other one, well, think of the cool stories you can tell your friends about the scars. I’d suggest, though, that you lie and claim it was the bear who soiled your sleeping pad.