Camping – This time, New Hampshire

This past weekend found Ploman and I trekking up to Tuxbury Pond to pitch our tent on my good friend [and hero] Terry’s RV plot. It was a little more posh than Ploman was used to – the formal dining room enclosed in a screened-in gazebo, the flushing indoor air conditioned toilet, and the [very chlorinated] pool all seemed to go against his (and to an extent, my) camping instincts. I’ve been RV camping plenty of times with my aunt and uncle down in Florida, so I have no issue with it. To me, camping in an RV is almost like going to a hotel, except you get your own kitchen, and there are usually a lot more fun things to do at an RV park than at a hotel. The Okeechobee KOA, for example, has a golf course, pool, tennis courts, game room, bar, nightly concerts, and llama farm next door.

In the spirit of “true camping,” however, we pitched our tent in the yard of the RV. This was not the kind of camping we will get to do next month when we head to Beartown State Forest in Massachusetts for a “real” camping trip – but it was fun, and Terry cooked delicious Persian food, and we toasted marshmallows, drank expensive whiskey, and generally lounged and enjoyed the woods.

Beartown is my favorite camping spot up here – the lake at Beartown is where we shower when we go, and the camping spots are nice – they all have a picnic bench, and a fire pit for grilling and making s’mores, and eco-friendly composting port-o-lets. Laura, Jordano, Ploman, Mike, Catherine and I will all be going, so it will be a good group of people. We’re all taking our kayaks and canoes so we can explore more of the lake than last time – we swam about 1/4 of the lake before becoming totally exhausted from the lack of floating. The mineral content of that lake is quite high, so it smells/tastes/feels good, but it offers no buoyancy, and so you sink like a stone if you don’t constantly tread water.