We're going Glamping

We are booked.

In little more than a month, my wife and I will step foot in our rented 21 ft. Coachman DX LX RV, don't quote me on the nomenclature. We will be heading up to our annual campaign spot just outside of Independence, CA off rt. 395, the most scenic highway ever built with American taxpayer money.

Unlike years past, where we shlepped tents, camping kitchens, sleeping bags, air mattresses, outdoors shower facilities, pots and pans, and just about about everything you can imagine that would fill an Acura MDX to the gills, and then some, we're camping with style this year.

Why? Why not?

It's been a brutal year and a half, for more reasons than I'm willing to discuss, and we deserve it.

We deserve a real toilet, a real bed, a real shower, and real good justification for not going to a Four seasons hotel for a long weekend, which we would do if we were smart, but we're not, so we're glamping. Of course there's always the added joy of making our tent-bound friends jealous.

This is not to say there is no trepidation with taking the Rig, that's technical RV jargon, out into the wild. You see I am still haunted by the ghosts of Winnebago nightmares from decades ago. If I were going to a therapist, these dim memories would have been long vanquished. But I don't visit a therapist and so they still reside in the basement of my amygdala.

Way back when, my chain-smoking parents thought it would be a good idea to rent a 30 foot Winnebago and pack our entire family, including three bratty kids, a noisy dog and a cranky grandfather, for a 1000 mile long trek from NY to Miami. In August. Did I mention my grandfather was a chainsmoker as well?

As first time RV'ers, we had no idea that all the accoutrements of a week long trip needed to be battened down as if we were swashbucklers in the Mayflower. Before we reached the New Jersey border, the floor of the RV was littered with sneakers, knives, forks, kosher salt, and the remains of hundreds of already smoked cigarettes, Camel, no filter.

Also, you coop 6 noisy New Yorkers in a box on wheels that is really not much larger than a jail cell, you're gonna have some major blowups. Particularly when one of those occupants, my father, had already spent a year of his life in a real jail cell and was somewhat prone to raging claustrophobia.

By the time we passed through the gates of Disneyworld, the Crappiest Place on Earth, I think it's safe to say that each of us were scouring the Winnebago for an escape hatch. Did I mention it was August? It was hot but it was suicidal heat.

But this will be different.

Now when we pull up to our campsite, I won't have to pop open the rooftop Yakima, nor string up the tent, nor assemble the kitchen, nor solve the puzzle of our showering facilities, nor crack open the bear box and load the 75 lbs. coolers into searing metal container.

I'll just back the 21 foot Coachman up, set my luxury camping chair up by the shaded mountain stream and pop open a dozen or so Einstock, Iceland's finest white ale.

Serenity, Now!