I’m possibly not the best person to respond, as I prefer such trips to be very far from civilization and completely self-reliant.
I find your suggestion to be cheating!
…I’m not that serious about you cheating, but then again, I only very, very rarely go “car camping” and usually only as a last resort on a long trip to a “real” camping/hiking experience. In those, there is no choice once you get hiking. I do take small luxuries, but really small. I like the challenge of the planning and packing a light-enough pack with enough delicious food.
I do, of course, allow a solid meal at a restaurant with much beer at the end of a trail, even though that does mean the pace of the last day is remarkably faster than the pace on the second-last day!
I like it the hard way, to be honest. Although when I read that word “anchorite” I conflated it with the town on Anchorage, Alaska, where camping anywhere less than a few km from the city IS the hard way, not much choice in the barren north…
Heh, I learned the new word ‘anchorite’ just now, too. Thanks Kimstu! I do learn a new thing every day here.
I agree, camping should be a ‘choose your own adventure’ tailored to one’s abilities and wishes, not some self-imposed hardship just for the sake of it. It should be fun, above all.
That said, I did a lot of camping in my 30s. I enjoy cooking, and I love to grill and cook over an open flame, so I don’t mind being ‘camp cook’ and I’d plan some great meals for most of the week. Back then we were kind of strict about not going into town unless we absolutely had to. That was kind of the point after all, we figured-- to get away from traffic and concrete and rectangular surfaces and annoying people and just take in the greenness and the quiet nature sounds. Kind of like a brain reset. To run into town in the middle of that and go to a restaurant would be like interrupting a good night’s sleep. Or, so I thought back then. We’d often stop at some small town non-chain restaurant on the way home, and some of those were great finds with excellent food. Or maybe it was just that I was, like, animal-hungry by then (no matter how well you pack, food is running thin by week’s end). I remember practically cleaning out a buffet at one place, and discovering the best scratch-made bean soup I ever had at another.
These days, most of the camping I do is at a friend’s land up north-- a few acres in a nice wooded piece of land that feels fairly remote, but a decent sized town is 8 miles away. We usually go up without much planning aforethought, so a run into town usually happens at some point. We don’t really do sit-down restaurants when in town, but grabbing some Taco Bell or burgers to go and taking it back to camp is not unheard of.
I will try to snag a ‘real’ restaurant meal as soon as I can, but I’m VERY cognizant of my potential offensiveness to other people and will try to take that into account.
“Camping” to me is renting a log cabin on a lake that has AC, a fridge, a stove, etc. I’m willing to cook freshly caught fish but, other than that, it’s store/restaurant bought food.
My strategy was, I’d always take one set of clothes that were nicer than my grubby, torn camping clothes, stuff I’d wear at home, and make sure to keep that set clean until the drive home. Then the day before or the day of, jump in the nearest lake or river to clean off. I was always reasonably presentable and inoffensive on the drive home.
Fresh caught fish cooked on the grill is one of the best things ever. One of the great regrets of my main camping days is that I was never a good enough fisherman to catch much of anything enough to feed us more than hors d’oeuvres.
Nah, I’ve fished all different bodies of water over the years and not had much luck. I mean, I have made a few big catches here and there, but they were times I either caught a fish I wouldn’t want to keep for eating, like a largemouth bass, or it was under circumstances that I was only prepared to catch and release.
But when I’ve actually tried to catch a nice big trout or a couple walleye hoping for a fish dinner, I come up empty. Bluegill are always easy to catch, but you have to catch and clean like a hundred to make any kind of a meal. Whatever the fishing equivalent of a ‘green thumb’ is, I ain’t got it
I am spoiled for fish after our great Sea of Cortez trip, where we caught, I cooked and we ate fresh caught mahi-mahi nearly every day. Now, the only cooked fish I like is the breaded sort in fish & chips.
In college, two friends and I biked from South suburban Chicago to almost St. Louis. One of the guy’s had family and a farm there. The first night we camped in a corn field. One of the guy’s girlfriend and other friends drove out to meet us. IIRC, they brought food for us to cook. I have no recollection how they found pre-cell phones. I know we had eggs, so we breakfasted before getting back on the road. Pre-internet also, and we were just basically following the Illinois river, we did not have a precise route, we were just winging it. Second day, we did not realize how much we were in the middle of Btt Fck Illinois. By early afternoon, we were out of water. We attempted to contact a big house on a hill, but the Doberman, Rottweiler and German shepherd made it clear we were not welcome. The next house we encountered was delipidated with a fallen tree in the front yard with at least a dozen feral cats lurking within it. Seeing as I was the one to try contacting the Hill house with dogs, another guy was chosen for this house. The house resident was in his front yard when we pulled up. The contact rode up the driveway about ten feet from the resident, ( who was barefoot and wearing overalls with only one strap attached) and immediately fell down because he he could not get his shoes out of his pedal clips. The resident directed us to a water valve attached to a pipe coming directly out of the ground. He said the water came from a nearby town. He asked us where we were from. When we answered Chicago, he said “I like Chicago, I like to be far away from Chicago”. We filled all our water containers and got back on the road as soon as possible. We rode the rest of the afternoon until we encountered a State(?) park along the river. Set up camp, prepared to cook dinner, though as the sun set, were attacked by 900 kabillion mosquitoes. We killed the fire and dove into our tent ASAP. Spent the next hour trying to kill all the mosquitoes already inside the tent. After not getting up too early, we were able to make breakfast , eggs and spam and got back one the road. After spending almost the entire day in nowhere, we crossed a bridge over the Illinois river and on the other side, there was a KFC. Definitely one of the top ten meals of my life, we were starving. Powered by KFC, we made it to the family farm that night.
The reward meal and beer(s) are icing on the backpacking cake. There have been times when I drove 2 hours out of the way after backpacking for that very select meal that had been calling my name from the trail. [FWIW, HK BBQ Master in Vancouver BC; char siu and roast duck on rice]
