I like to travel and I love nice places to stay at, such as hotels, resorts, B&Bs, etc. It never occurred to me to try out sleeping on the hard surfaced outdoors, with only a flimsy tent that a bear could rip down with a tap, to protect me.
Well, then we moved to B.C....where there is a crazy camping culture here and vehicles such as the below are seen at least every few minutes in the streets of urban Vancouver.
Our friends managed to secure a 4 family campsite at Alice Lake, which is an hour and 10 minutes north of our apartment close to the town of Squamish, B.C. They did it on January 2nd when Vancouver Parks Board posts all the campgrounds for reservation and it usually sells out for the major weekends within 3 minutes, so we got VERY lucky. With much convincing, thought and consideration, we agreed to go camping as a group. Our friends provided us with all the gear, so we figured this would be our only chance to have the courage to do it with the kids so young. They were going for 3 nights, but I was convinced I'd only survive 2, so that's what we did this past Labour Day Weekend from Saturday morning - Monday afternoon.
It was SO not what we imagined. It was actually very spacious, clean, outhouse was a 15 second walk from our site AND we paid extra for electricity. Each campsite was separated by trees and it was quite private with your own fire pit.The weather was wonderful, but we actually didn't pack enough layers (who would've thought it'd get so cold with trees covering the site after sunset?), but no worries, Wal-Mart was only 10 minutes away!
We were a 5 minute walk from the beautiful Alice Lake, which I was convinced would have a million mosquitoes, but it DIDN'T! Instead, it had 3 beaches, picnic tables and views of the snow-capped mountains. Long story short, we had a blast chatting by the fire every night and the kids had a blast in the wild outdoors. Oh, and that pesky cougar went away so the trails opened up again. Julian loved riding his bike around with Melvin.
Sunday night was our (Melvin & I) turn to make dinner, so we had decided to make a Dominican Feast. That was before 3 more families decided to come up for the day, but no problem, we had 2 chefs at our disposal and they were able to help us get our menu together in the wilderness. We brought all the meats marinated and I must have bought 10 lbs of produce -plantains, bell peppers, mangoes, avocados, tomatoes, onions, etc. We successfully fed 14 adults and 11 children with white rice, black beans, tostones, pico de gallo, chickpea salad, guacamole and steaks/chicken on the grill. Everyone was happy and we ended the meal with banana boats (bananas with toppings-chocolate, marshmallow, nuts, etc in foil thrown on the fire) and s'mores. Divine!
My general outlook after my first weekend camping is this: It's loads of fun with a group of people, we'd be eaten alive out there if we went alone, it requires A LOT of work if you want to eat well (eating canned beans/chili and nuts all weekend is not acceptable), kids have a blast and it's healthy for them to be outdoors and be dirty every once in awhile, 2 nights max, great weather and electric hook-up is mandatory. Oh, and never forget the Aerobed and warm clothing for night time.
Oh alright, the title of this post should really be "Luxury Camping"....
