My wife and I are coming up on our 30-year anniversary.
Thirty years ago, for our first anniversary, we decided to explore the finger lakes region of upstate New York.
We mapped out, via AAA paper trip-tick, a route around Cayuga and Seneca Lakes, with stops in Ithaca, Seneca Falls, Watkins Glen, and many of the little wineries along the way. A week or so of sightseeing, hiking, tasting, and generally just being together.
We also had very little money.
I grew up in a camping family, but I describe myself as camping agnostic. Our vacations weren’t exclusively camping, but many of the 15-20 vacations I took as a kid were camping.
For example, we camped at Disneyworld…in August. I’m still not over it. Even as a kid in the magical land of Disney, I was miserable. I remember the constant steam bath interrupted by quick ducks into the gloriously air-conditioned bathroom or trinket shop in the park, but unfortunately, nowhere to hide at the campsite.
So here we are, planning our first little vacation together, and given what we’re doing, where we’re going, and the lack of funds, I suggest,
“Hey, babe, you know if we camped, we could save some money and we’d be more on our own time schedule.”
And she turned to me and said quite earnestly,
“Let me be clear. If you wanna go camping, that’s fine. But never confuse camping with vacation, and this is vacation.”
We’ve never been camping in our 30 years.
