I car camp and I backpack. Both are camping in my mind.
Interestingly enough, the public library in Fairfax, Virginia (which is in an urban area and has a parking garage underneath) includes notices in the parking garage that establish that, for the purposes of Library property, “camping” is forbidden, and they provide a legal definition that has been established for that purpose, which, iirc, includes, basically, erecting a shelter out of doors (a parking garage is legally outdoors according to the policy), cooking outdoors, and perhaps one or two more things. But that’s for law enforcement purposes. I believe that the purpose of the policy is to discourage homeless people from living down there.
Well played.
Got it, Thudlow 
My late stepfather had a property up in the Blue Ridge, with a main lodge and two smaller cabins, two miles by dirt and gravel road from the paved road. These cabins had electricity, indoor plumbing, hot and cold running water. Staying in those cabins was not camping, by any stretch of the imagination.
I’ve also stayed, a goodly number of times, at more primitive cabins owned by the Potomac Appalachian Trail Club. These PATC cabins generally involved a nontrivial hike in, had no electricity (light from candles and flashlights, and a lantern if you brought one), no indoor plumbing, a wood stove, and if you wanted water, you had to carry it in from a spring that was usually no more than 100 feet away.
Never thought of that as camping, either.
The distinguishing feature between staying in these cabins and camping was that we were indoors. The rain and snow could pelt down as they would, but it was outside, and we were inside.
I don’t think it makes a difference whether your cabin that gives you an unmistakable ‘indoors’ has wheels or not. If it has a hard exterior, and you can go inside and close the doors and windows and let all but the most extreme weather do what it will while you sleep soundly, knowing it can’t get to you, you’re not camping. You’re indoors.
I’ve never used a popup tent, so I’m agnostic about whether that constitutes camping. It’s the answer I checked, since I’m not prepared to write it off. And I don’t think there’s anything essential about sleeping on the ground: if you sleep on a cot in a tent, you’re still camping.
If that isn’t camping by some people’s lights, that’s about as close as I’m going to come anytime soon: at 57, my back has decided it’s not up to sleeping on the ground anymore, and for the time being I don’t plan on overriding its vote, absent some dire necessity.
We’ll see what happens when the Firebug (who turns 4 this summer) gets old enough that he’d like to go camping, because there’s all too good a chance I’d decide I’d rather go with him, aging back be damned, than miss out on that part of his growing up.
For me, camping is sleeping overnight in a facility with no room service, or carry out.
Tris
At a bare minimum, you have to be sleeping in a tent on the ground. But if you’re within a short distance of your car, then my SO and I call that “car camping.”
We prefer to load everything into a backpack and have a minimum 1 mile hike to where we set up our tent. We call that either “backpacking” or just “camping.”
Anything that puts you in the middle of a natural area gets my vote, especially if it has no electricity or running water.
I grew up camping in a pop up trailer. We parked it at a small, primitive campground at the lake at the beginning of summer and stayed there all summer long. Dad would go to work from there and Mom and us kids spent our days swimming, fishing, visiting with other folks in the same ~one square mile that encompassed a small lake and woods. We had a propane stove, but used a campfire just as much. The campground had outdoor privies set up about every twenty-five spaces or so. We bathed in the lake (always with Ivory soap because it floated).
Nowadays, my camping tends to be of the tent variety, but with a queen sized air matress. Like RTFirefly, my bones don’t do well sleeping on the ground anymore. Some of the time, I’m in view of my vehicle, but others are walk-in. I also have made the concession of taking a cell phone with me over the past few years, although it’s turned off. GPS and the ability to summon rescuers allows for more adventurous camping. Regardless, I’m in a natural setting.
It’s all in the mindset.
If I hike up into a cabin in the wilderness with food, friends and whiskey, it’s camping.
If I’m on a fire 30 miles outside of Tok AK and I spend 14 days sleeping in a tent on the ground while working 16 hour days, it’s not camping it’s working.
Camping should be a fun outdoor vacation.
I laugh-snerked.
As a kid, I used to go camping with my family for a week or two every summer. The minors had sleeping bags on the floors of the two tents. My parents had cots with thin mattresses. Running water at the camp site, with bathrooms within walking distance. Hot showers, flush toilets, and no mirrors is what Mom wanted. We had electricity at the camp sites, enough for a light and firing up the electric skillet and coffee pot, but not at the same time. There was a lot of stuff cooked on the Coleman stove, kept in the Coleman ice chest, and lit up by the Coleman lantern. Swimming in a cold river all day and getting blistered every summer.
I questioned Mom about taking a family of six (mom, pop, and four kids) camping for two weeks. This was a vacation for her? Her answer was basically, it was a vacation because it was different. I would suspect that some people’s definition of camping is anything other than their own bed. Think about the kids “camping” in the living room when guests or relatives arrive.
Having thought about it a bit, I think I define camping such that a (n overnight) trip can be considered camping if and only if a rainstorm will significantly fuck things up and annoy everyone. So, I voted for ‘it has to involve a tent’.
(I realise that this isn’t a completely air tight definition, formally speaking, but I stand by the spirit of it)
I generally camped in a tent in areas where there is water pumps nearby, and bathrooms with showers. I had friends that had a 30 or 40 foot trailer, and I slept in that a few times. As I get older, I’m less snobbish about what’s camping. Any time you’re not sleeping in a proper home, apartment, or motel room and you are sitting around a fire at night, cooking some food over said fire, and spending more than your usual amount of time outdoors, you’re camping.
Unless that’s how you normally live, that is.
Voted “Tents on the ground” but I confess that I loathe tents.
We either backpack in and make our own shelters or we go 4x4’n somewhere pretty and drink lots of beer. Either way we usually skip tents - they’re noisy and smelly.
Camping is funny in that if you find yourself in a campground, you’ve failed to achieve what I would consider camping - whatever blows your hair back though.
I’m not sure I’d go quite that far, but I’d say “There are no microwaves or waiters in camping.”
I’ve got friends who snowshoe into camp and they’re not even hunting or ice fishing, they just take a longass hike to SLEEP IN THE SNOW.
Now I’ve gone snow camping a couple of times but I’m not rushing right out to do it again. There’s always someone tougher.
When we are able to drive the car up and dump the tent, camp-stove, tucker-box, etc, we call this “car camping.”
If we schlep in in, it’s “backpacking”. Even if a pack animal helps.
On the rare occ we had a trailer, RV etc, it was “RVing”.
I do accept a pre-set up canvas tent as “camping” even if it has a wood floor and electricity.
Camping involves having to haul in your water (no running water) and no electricity to your abode.
A tent in the back yard - camping
A 30" 5th wheel trailer with slide-outs, a kingsize bed, hot showers and AC, even if you are in the middle of no-where - not camping
Other requirements -
bonfire
seating limited to lawnchairs, picnic tables or the ground.
bugs - it really isn’t camping if there aren’t bugs.
Yeah, I remember on the Sarah Palin show when they went camping on a riverfront, Kate Gosselin didnt get it, she was wondering/asking why the Palin family pretended to be “homeless” .
That’s gonna be some awfully tight quarters.