Camping – and Dirt! – Are the New Luxuries

By Robert McGarvey

Is camping the new luxury? So says Travel + Leisure, a publication that I can’t say I turn to as a mainstay source but in this instance it won my attention. That’s because, as regular readers know, for the past six months I have had a monthly habit of spending a couple or three nights tent camping, something I had no history of doing but suddenly – inexplicably – I was seized by the desire to sleep on dirt.

Maybe T + L has insight into what motivated me.

“We see travelers seeking out activities that require more mental and physical exertion,” Misty Belles, vice president of global public relations for Virtuoso, a network of luxury travel advisors, told T + L. “C-suite clients in particular want experiences that go beyond their comfort zone. Executives at the highest levels are willing to push boundaries, and they like to test themselves.”

I am no c-suiter but I’ve spent my life working with my brain and a keyboard and, as I age, I am attracted to wholly different kinds of activities. Admittedly I do not fit the tent camping demographic. Just 10% of tent campers are Baby Boomers and older.  (57.7% of RV owners, by contrast, are Boomers.  That just holds no appeal for me right now.  A few years from now, who knows.)

But I find myself attracted to pushing my personal boundaries.

What I like about tent camping is its utter strangeness for me.  It’s way out of my comfort zone.

Each camping trip brings me new challenges. Last month in Joshua Tree CA, it was wind that threatened to blow away the tent. And then I remembered I’d read something, somewhere about guy lines, strings that make a tent set up taut.  I was sure I didn’t have any so I drove to a nearby town bought some strings – not exactly guy lines but a workable substitution – and an hour later I had the tent secure.

Of course I also found when I was taking the tent down that, amid the stakes provided with my fancy tent, there already was a small packet of genuine guy lines. That’s ok. Tomorrow I am heading to a campsite in Sedona where there likely will be wind and rain so this will involve all my guy lines to keep the tent taut and the inside dry.

It may seem as though I simply did a 180 and there I was camping.  But arguably the 150 miles I walked in Spain on the Camino in 2021 and the 150 I walked in Portugal and Spain in 2022 helped to reset my mind regarding the outdoors.  Incidentally there is little camping available along the Camino – but I did spend hundreds of hours outside in nature and in the process grew to enjoy it.

What do you need to do similar? You don’t have to spend the $2000 or so I’ve plunked down to make my camping somewhat comfortable. REI offers rental gear and a camping kit costs $151 for the first night and $36 per additional night.  It has all the basics.  I’d recommend using the rental stuff for the first couple trips.  You may like it, you may hate it.

Where to do your first camping? I did mine at Bryce Canyon in Utah, a beautiful park that’s neglected by campers as most seek out nearby Zion and Moab.  

I also highly recommend Organ Pipe National Monument in southern Arizona (on the Mexican border) and Joshua Tree, 150 miles west of Los Angeles.

The marquee national parks – the Grand Canyon, Yosemite, Zion – have complex reservation systems and it can take patience to get a booking. The lesser known national parks are easier to book into and that works for me.

First impressions are that the national parks and monuments are better serviced and equipped than campgrounds in national forests.  But national forest campgrounds often have more availability and, personally, I like Manzanita a few miles outside Sedona.

I have only used federal campsites.  In some states there are very good state campsites but I can’t comment specifically.

What you can’t rent from REI is the right mental attitude and you will need it.

Go into camping with utter humility. You know nothing. At least I didn’t. Be prepared to figure out everything. And keep adapting and evolving. Every trip I bring some new gear as new needs arise. Every trip I see things a little differently.

Will I ever get this figured out? I’m not betting that I will but that’s part of the excitement. It’s just fun to embrace one’s ignorance,  And that is what nature lets us do.