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In another special mini episode of Women Who Travel, Lale catches up with listener Jamie, who says she loves the idea of camping, but can never quite get it right. Enter, calamitous stories of thunderstorms in the Grand Canyon and a misguided weekend at a music festival.
Lale Arikoglu: I love this. I'm talking to a few different people, so I feel like I'm speed dating, but just for travel stories, so there's no pressure on my end.
Hello, welcome to a special mini-episode of Women Who Travel. I'm Lale Arikoglu. This month we're taking a break from our typical episode schedule. Instead, you'll be hearing some phone calls between our listeners and me about travels they've taken in search of something. Last week, I spoke with Sinel about a food reunion 20 years in the making. And this week, camping gone awry with a phone call from Jamie.
Jamie: I want to love camping. I want to love it so much. I feel like I need more nature in my life. I'm happier when I'm outside, and it's scenic places and hiking. I love it. I love it. I feel so good when I'm outside. But my few attempts at camping have been so awful that I can't-
LA: [laughs]
Jamie: I'm done. And, and in fact, yes- just last night, I was taking to a friend of mine who said she's gonna go canoe camping in the Boundary Waters of Canada, like, up near the border of Wisconsin.
LA: It sounds intense.
Jamie: And I was like, "Canoe camping." I'm like, "That would be amazing." And then I was like, “Oh my god, I'd be so miserable. What a-”
LA: [laughs]
Jamie: What, canoe ca- Like, just everything is in your canoe? Uh, picture that in the rain and with bears and, you know, oh my gosh, no. And with all your stuff, yeah, no, no, no, no.
LA: Before we get into the challenges of the outdoors and all the reasons that you just listed off as to why it seems like maybe, you know, you and the outdoors, you're just, you're not meshing right now. You haven't found your, you haven't found your rhythm. But you said that it makes you really happy. Why does it make you happy?
Jamie: It does. I don't know, there's just something about being outside. It d- it's like stress relieving. And I don't know, it's, you just breathe better and you're just... I don't know. I, I, I, it's hard to kinda put into words how I feel about it, but it's, as someone who lives in an urban area, there's just something about just seeing the great wide open and no people and, and trees and grass and flowers and, you know, wild animals and wild flowers. And it just, it's so appealing and it's so beautiful. And I want to emerge myself in it more than just for a day hike.
LA: So, tell me about one of these camping trips. What was your vision for it and then what was the reality?
Jamie: So, my very first camping trip, and this goes back to 1999, was in a field in Manchester, Tennessee. It was a music festival called Itchycoo Park, which eventually became Bonnaroo.
LA: Oh, that's amazing. I love that. Also, just full disclosure, I've only ever camped at a music festival, so it's all I know.
Jamie: Okay. So then you'll be able to relate to this completely.
LA: [laughs]
Jamie: This was a big, open field in the summer in Tennessee in the... rural Tennessee. It was so hot. It was so, like, there was just a couple of porta-potties. Everyone was drinking heavily. Every... There was loud music. We were all kind of on top of each other. I remember, um, my husband, he was just my boyfriend at the time, but the porta-potties were so gross that as like a sign of how much he cared for me, he made mittens on his hands out of toilet paper and wiped down the porta-potty for me before I went in.
LA: Oh my god, what a, what an angel [laughs].
Jamie: And I'm like, "This is the guy for me." I know.
LA: I think that's the most romantic thing I've ever heard.
Jamie: This man loves me [laughs]. So, um, yeah. It was, um, really super nasty, drunk people, like, falling asleep with their, you know, music blasting, you know, just hot, dirty. Um, the music was great, um, when we went to the concerts. But like, you don't eat well when you camp. You eat, like, hotdogs and I don- it's, I don't know. S'mores, fine, but like, you can't eat s'mores three times a day. And when it's that hot, who wants to build a campfire?
LA: Well, then also, my vision of s'mores is, you know, in some like beautiful forest, or maybe not 'cause you're probably not s'posed to have a fire in a forest, but some beautiful rural setting that I'm camping at that isn't next to a porta-loo-
Jamie: Right, right.
LA: ... where my husband's had to make me mittens to-
Jamie: Right, toilet paper mittens.
LA: Yeah.
Jamie: Right. So our next camping attempt after that was in the Grand Canyon, and I was like, "Now this is gonna be great." And-
LA: You must've been like, "Now, this is camping." [laughs]
Jamie: Right. I'm like, "That was just a music festival, right? This is gonna be like camping in a national park. This is gonna be fantastic." Well, as you probably know, like, to even get this spot, like, we had to plan like a year in advance, right, to get the spot. We go and it is m- it was certainly more remote and more pretty, but there were still a lot of people around. And, um, we had, you know, all your food has to be hung up, you know, for the, because of the bears. So you can't, like, put a protein bar in your tent with you or for the middle of the night or... not that I would eat that. But like, you know, like, everything has to be hung up. But we, again, the weather was our enemy. It just rained and rained and rained. And we were trying to keep everything in the tent, but like, water was getting in the tent. The sleeping bags were getting wet. The food, which is hanging from a tree, is getting wet. We ended up sleeping in the car.
LA: Oh, no.
Jamie: It was horrible.
LA: [laughs]
Jamie: Like, because who... Nobody sleeps in the car. And, and with all your stuff out at... ugh. And so anyway, the next morning it had kind of like cleared up. We're trying to hang our sleeping bags so they dry out and just everything. And then, and then it kinda rained off and on during the day, so everything was wet the whole time. Um, the food, like, we tri- you know, we couldn't cook. You can't start a fire in the rain. And all of our food was, like, stu- Like, we can't eat raw hotdogs or, you know, it was just we couldn't eat. Everything was wet.
LA: It's been hanging up in that tree getting wet.
Jamie: It's h- hanging up in the tree [laughs] getting wet 'cause I don- ma- You know, I think maybe the prob- maybe we didn't have the right equipment and that maybe was our fail here.
You know, or maybe it was a certain, uh, I don't know. Certainly, camping in the summer is not for the meek. Um, you know, the time of year, I, I don't know how to handle the weather. Um...
LA: But, so you had all these learnings though, and then you went camping again.
Jamie: Right. And-
LA: So you must've felt like, okay, we, we're not novices now. We can learn from our mistakes.
Jamie: Right. Right. We know how to put up a tent now. We know, like, what kinda foods to bring and not bring. But again, you're still bringing so much stuff. Like, you're, you just have to bring things to cook with, things to start a fire with, uh, you know, a pad for your bed, your pillow, your... You know, it's just so much to carry and bring. I don't know how these people do it in tiny little backpacks and go for two weeks.
LA: Or in canoes.
Jamie: Or canoes, right. And I mean, that's just a level I don't know if I can ever achieve. So I would say the Grand Canyon was better. We did end up in a hotel at night too, again, everything soaking wet, just... But funny enough, because there were no hotel rooms left, we ended up getting just a, a hotel with one bed, and so two of us had to sleep on the floor. So we're like, "We're camping," [laughs] um, of a-
LA: [laughs]
Jamie: ... of a Holiday Inn, like, a really grungy Holiday Inn.
LA: That's like when you, uh, sort of say to your parents that you wanna go camping and they set the tent up, like, in the living room or something [laughs].
Jamie: [laughs] So, um, yeah. And then, um, a third, uh, camping attempt involved, like, um, it was in a place called Santa Claus, Indiana. It's a small town in Southern Indiana. We were with the kids. And, um, it was like a, it was like trailers. And again, we had like a hundred degree day, so you don't wanna start a campfire. And then, what's there to do at night if you don't have a campfire? So we're sitting in this un-air-conditioned trailer. We're all sweating. Everyone was miserable. I don't know. So I'd obviously been paying close attention to a lot of the new glamping options.
LA: Okay. So I was gonna ask, 'cause as, you know, I'm, I'm also not a good camper, again, it's only been music festivals, but one of my many mistakes was I borrowed some sleeping bags and forgot to look at... I didn't think to check the size and then realized they were children's sleeping bags.
Jamie: [laughs]
LA: So spent three days at Reading Festival in England-
Jamie: Curled up.
LA: ... sleeping in a child's sleeping bag. And I'm not the tallest person, but I'm not the height of an eight-year-old.
Jamie: Right, right [laughs].
LA: So I've realized I'm more of a glamping girl. So have you tried it?
Jamie: I have not, but you know, do you think glamping is cheating though? Is that real camping if you have, you know, 600-thread-count sheets and a pillow-top mattress and a bathroom? That, is that camping? No, you're just staying in a airy hotel.
LA: I've been thinking about this. So, it is cheating. I'm not gonna call it camping. I'm not setting up that yurt or whatever it is by myself. And if you're sleeping in a real bed, it's not camping, right? But what you said earlier at the start kind of got me thinking because what it sounds like is it's not the, the sleeping in the tent that you want to connect with or, or anything like that. It's you want to be outside and you want to be in nature. And you want it to be more than a day hike. And glamping allows you to do that, and you won't end up si- sleeping in your car. So maybe there's actually a solution there. 'Cause I did it for Bryce Canyon last summer for three nights, and it was one of the most magical, magical weekends I've spent. It was e- extraordinary.
Jamie: Can you imagine like the sky full of stars and, you know, just, oh, the peace and the beauty of nighttime? It, I mean, I think your trip sounds fantastic.
LA: Well, then you know what this, this glamping tent had was a little window above where you slept that was just kind of like clear plastic that looked up onto the stars. And so, when it was completely clear, you could see every star.
Jamie: Oh.
LA: And it was a full moon, so the whole tent was illuminated by the moon.
Jamie: Oh.
LA: And you wouldn't have had that in your…
Jamie: See, that's magical sounding. That is the kind of experience I'm chasing with my camping attempts, but I don't know, perhaps your listeners have some ideas for what I'm doing wrong. Or if there's a re- My issues really have more been around the weather. I don't know how to camp in bad weather. I don't know what to do. Like, it... How do you avoid it? What do you... When it's a hundred degrees, how do you cook dinner over a fire? Uh, or do you just eat, you know, Rice Krispie Treats? I don't know.
LA: There are places in America that aren't a hundred degrees, fewer and fewer as the summers go by.
Jamie: [laughs]
LA: But I'm interested to know if you were gonna do another one, where would it be? Where are you desperate to get to next that you'd actually give camping a chance then one more time?
Jamie: Yeah. I have Yosemite on my list, high on my list. That's also a hard place to get a spot. And I think you're right, I think do not go in summer. I need to go in the shoulder seasons or in the fall, or how crazy am I, maybe in the winter. But, uh, no, I, I'm not ready for that yet. But I think, um, I, I don't wanna give up on it, but my experiences have just been so, so negative. And I mean, we can laugh about it now, but at the time we were not laughing. We were like, "This stinks." So, where do you wanna go? Where's your, where's your wish for camping?
LA: I mean, I'd really like to go to the Grand Canyon, but [laughs] I think I'm gonna have to study the weather. And yeah, that's kind of top of my list. It's a park I ha- I have yet to see it. I'd also love to go to Yellowstone, so a few places. But I hope you find the right camping destination, and I have faith you're gonna do it.
Jamie: Thank you. I do too.
LA: So, listeners-
Jamie: [laughs]
LA: ... if you have tips, send them to Women Who Travel and we will pass them on to Jamie. And you're gonna have to come back on and tell us about your next camping trip.
Jamie: I mean, what if it's a huge success? I will owe it all to you and your listeners.
LA: Oh, and if it's not, then it's more fodder for a goods story.
Jamie: [laughs] Well, the best travel stories are always when things go wrong, right?
LA: Yeah, exactly. Who's ever laughed at a dinner party story about something going right?
Jamie: Right [laughs].
LA: This was great. This was so fun. Um, weirdly, you've made me wanna go camping.
Jamie: [laughs]
LA: So I think it's been a success.
Jamie: Okay. Well, thank you so much for having me on.
LA: Thank you. I'm Lale Arikoglu, and you can find me on Instagram @lalehannah. Our engineer this week is Gabe Quiroga. The show is mixed by Amar Lal. Jude Kampfner from Corporation for Independent Media is our producer. And special thanks to Jordan Bell for producing this episode. If you have a memorable travel story, write to us at womenwhotravel@cntraveler.com.
Next week as the FIFA World Cup tournament draws to a close, we hear from America's most traveled professional soccer player, who's participated in the Olympics and World Cups, and consider the journeys that players had to take across New Zealand and Australia.