We recently went camping with some friends in a nearby state park. To plan the trip we had to pick dates and book our site months in advance. Camping reservations have gotten to the point where if you don’t plan way in advance, you may never find a site. Gone are the days of just showing up and finding something, at least on a weekend.
Camping has always been appealing to me as a way to disconnect in the relative seclusion of the outdoors. But there was no way that was possible on this trip – it couldn’t have been noisier or more crowded.
We still had a fun time, but as we packed up and left Sunday, we noticed everyone else was gone too. If you were camping on a Sunday night, or even a Monday or Tuesday, You’d probably have the place to yourself.
Or better yet, skip the car and go backpacking instead. Certainly there’s fewer people willing to make that kind of effort. It’s worth embracing the stuff that most other people overlook as too hard or too much work. Certainly you’ll have less competition that way, and you may just find satisfaction in the very fact that you’re taking the “hard” way instead.