When I was growing up, my family went on the same vacation every year. We backpacked – at first in the Sierras, then in the Rocky Mountains of Colorado – as a family.

Every. Single. Year.

You went to Disneyland when you were three years old? How nice for you. Here’s the summer of my third year:

It was mostly drudgery, but it was a beautiful drudgery. My dad took approximately 1 million slides to commemorate this fact. Unfortunately, most of the slides are of scenery. Here’s a rare one with people in it … sort of:

I had a lot of “firsts” on those trips. Here’s my first fish:

And this is my first time on a horse:

But as the years went on and we got bigger and could carry more, the trips got longer.  A lot longer. In the end, my dad packed us up for three solid weeks of this.  All five of us piled in the Volvo station wagon with so much dehydrated food that we could barely move in the backseat from San Diego to Durango.  This doesn’t do it justice, but for some reason, we have a photo of it (no people, of course):

Anyway, when my beloved older brother stopped going, I didn’t want to go either. My sister had been lobbying to stop going since she was 5 years old so, obviously, she was on our team. This is a picture of our last trip. No making fun of the floppy yellow hat. It was 1979:

The reason I’m telling you all this is because, as an adult, I DO NOT WANT TO ROUGH IT. Unfortunately, my husband does.  Oh, sure, we had an uneasy alliance in the beginning as I learned the joys of car camping.  Bigger tents!  Fresh food!  Beer!  Sleeping mats!  Ice!  Tables!  Bathrooms!

For awhile, I was pretty content.  And then we started going camping with another family.  My friend, Robin, brought A LOT of stuff for her family of five.   Real plates!  Silverware!  A two burner stove!  Cast iron pans!  Then, they showed up with a POP UP CAMPER!  Oh, the jealousy …

So, little by little, I started bringing more and more … and just a few years later, our little family of three needed a big Thule box for the top of our filled-to-the-brim 4Runner SUV just to go camping for three days.  A three burner stove!  A Coleman oven!  A pop up kitchen!  Pantries with drawers!  Two coolers!  A shower!  A tent made for 8!  Aerobeds for everyone!

My husband suffered … but not in silence.  After all, his easy-breezy-lemon-squeezy camping trips had turned into a nomadic Bedouin nightmare.  Then, the coup d’ grace: our camping partners moved to Australia, leaving us their pop-up camper to use while they were gone.  My husband balked, I pushed … and thus, the camping trips came to an abrupt halt.  Sadly, two summers have passed and we have never popped the pop-up.

I miss camping.  I’m actually ready to make some concessions but, alas, have not been able to lure my husband to the bargaining table yet.  In the meantime, I still read articles like this one about “glamping” with wistfulness in my heart.  And then I remember what real camping is like and I realize, car camping is glamping.  At least for someone who’s been where I have …