Don't it always seem to go that you don't know what you've got till it's gone
That line from Joni Mitchell's Big Yellow Taxi perfectly sums up how I felt last summer with not being able to travel. When you got from hopping on a flight once a month for long weekends across Europe to basically not leaving your backyard, it puts things in perspective. At the end of Summer 2020, I knew I couldn't do another one like that. Enter camping.
All throughout winter we casually talked about getting a camper. And in February, we traded in our Subaru Outback and Mini Cooper convertible for a Jeep Wrangler, thinking of all the summer adventures we'd be able to have. What we didn't realize was (1) the Wrangler doesn't really have great towing capacity, limiting our choices dramatically, and (2) everyone else in the known universe decided they wanted to go camping this summer, too, and now there's a six month wait (at least) on the small campers our car can actually tow.
So now we're back to talking about traditional car camping.
When we moved to Ireland, we sold off all of our gear, so now we have to start from scratch, and every time I think about climbing in and out of a tent, the longing for one of those adorable (and crazy expensive) teardrop trailers with wet bath and kitchen grows and grows. Still, before we invest that kind of cash in something we don't actually know if we'll make sufficient use of, it seems like a smart idea to figure out if we still like camping. Growing up, that was the only type of vacation my family ever took, but I'm 43 years old now, and sleeping on the floor holds far less appeal than it once did.
I'm curious to see how this all plays out.
