What is “camping” for you?
RV park?
Tenting by your vehicle in a campground?
Tenting by your vehicle in the bush?
Hiking or canoeing in an area where there are campsites?
Hiking or canoeing in an area where there are no campsites?
Hiking or canoeing in an area more than a week from other people?
For me, camping means high heels and a feather boa.
For me it means hiding behind some barrels in the dark so no bugger can shoot me.
Oh sorry that was half life 
Camping is something that is best enjoyed when only shared with the group you are camping with. This summer I had the “pleasure” of camping in a public campsite where cars could be parked right next to the site. I felt like I was in the middle of a large city while we had to navigate around all of the other campers. There was no sense of solitude because most of the other sites had radios blaring away. And oh yeah, there was a Harley convention or something 3 sites down that insisted on revving their bikes every ten minutes and riding around all of the camping sites. In my opinion, camping does not begin on your list until you get to “Tenting by your vehicle in the bush”. At least there you have solitude and some semblance of being cut off from the outside world. My favorite type of camping is hiking and camping in an area where there are no marked campsites. Just set up whereever we need to. Enjoy nature and relish the temporary absence of the “real world”.
I’ve never been camping, but I don’t think RV-ing counts. My folks have an RV - microwave, stereo, cable TV hookup, washer-dryer… not camping.
Camping is sleeping in a tent and cooking over an open fire. Really roughing it is camping away from toilet facilities. At least that’s the way I see it.
LMAO Miller.
I once went down the Kipawa River in red pumps (class IV wildwater and on the top ten list for endangered rivers in Canada). Hey, a man has to do what a man has to do. (I had forgotten my paddling boots, and the pumps were the only extra footwear in any of our group’s vehicles.)
Camping: Being anywhere without an electrical hook-up and a computer for more than 24 hours.
For me, camping would start at about #5 on your list. I don’t want to drive to a campsite - I don’t really want a “campsite”
Leaning back to my days as a boy scout (I’m sorry, but I was one and I can’t change that even though I’m ashamed to admit it today) the best camping was when we parked the vehicles and had at least a 5 or 10 mile hike into the woods to find a nice clearing in the trees to make camp.
When I go camping today (nowhere NEAR as often as I’d like) I still try to do the same thing. When camping, I’m looking for peace, quiet, solitude, the sound of chirping birds and rushing water. I’m not looking for exhaust fumes and 24 hour a day hip-hop from the next campsite…
OTOH, when making a long road trip - either by bike or jeep - I do find it nice to be able to pull in to a KOA for the night and pitch a tent next to the vehicle. I don’t consider that camping, however - it’s just an outdoor motel.
Camping - bringing only stuff you can carry (non-moterized so canoe is ok), setting up a tent, hanging you food so the bears won’t get it and sleeping in the middle of nowhere for the night (at least)
Car camping - loading up the car with all the stuff you can carry, driving right up to the site, pluggin in a powerstrip (and shoving a penny in the fusebox once that little 15A one blows)
Camping: A place which is cut off enough from other people…a good distance from the toilets (which are outhouses)… you can still drive your car up but you have privacy… sleeping in a tent cooking over a fire/camp stove…
Most roughing it I’ve ever done… horseback riding in Kananaskis. We camped by a lake and there was no way anyone could drive up (there was a couple of dirt roads but there was no one around). There were no toilets at all, no tents, no cooking stuff beyond a couple small single stoves. We slept on a small hill overlooking the lake under a couple of tarps in case it rained, the horses tied up nearby. At night there was a soft breeze coming off the lake and it blew through our tarps. We could hear the loons off the lake… it was gorgeous. The best 3 days I ever had.
Pennsic!
For me, camping includes all the medieval amenities, a Viking-style tent (ah, for a real pavilion… someday… someday…), and circling fifteen tents around the campfire for bardic circles that run late into the night. Getting up in the morning, fighting until the heat gets to us, then food and do it all again.
I camped as a lad when I was a Boy Scout. Sleep was frequently interrupted by psychotic moths beating at my face. Ridiculous cloth houses were cold and wet. Why did I leave a perfectly good house for this?
Now, I don’t camp. Let sleeping bags lie, I say.
–Nott, back in civilization
When my family decides to go “camping,” I usually end up sleeping in the back of the car.
Giselle + Nature + No Showers = Big Emotional Mess
Camping is where the motel doesn’t have cable.
Camping = tent, li-lo’s, sleeping bags, esky, billy and cast-iron cauldron plus:
It must have a river and be at least 150 km from home, and 30 km from nearest ‘civilization’.
Optional Extra’s = Pit Dunny, Public Access water-tank (in areas where there is no fresh water like on the coast).
Definite no-no’s: Caravan Park, Electricity, Bikie Conventions in vicinity.
“We build these nice warm houses and leave them and go lie on the ground! I’m from New York - we don’t call that camping, we call that homeless!” - Karen Williams
A tent, grass, a place to make a fire, roast hot dogs and make shmoors (mmmm…shmoors). The car can be close by, you know, in case it rains or there’s a bear attack or something, and if there happens to be a place near by with a bathroom and running water, that’s cool too. But as long as there are trees and solitude and the sense of “Getting away from it all,” that’s camping to me.
I really have done this before:
Pack up a rucksack with a little pup tent, sleeping bag, four days of underwear and socks, couple of days of food (I fished for the rest), and a big bottle of whiskey, and spent a happy 1-week vacation in the hills of North Central New Jersey. Me and a couple of buds.
Camping = roughing it to the max. Like, “eat the wabbit” roughin’ it.
Tripler
Yes, I live of the fat ‘o’ the land.
Camping for me started as going somewhere with a tent trailer and staying there for a couple of days.
Few years later I moved on to a big tent and a campfire.
Later a small tent and a fire.
More recently, building my own shelter from sticks and starting a fire with a match.
Soon my hope is to go out into the bush with a knife a GPS and some food. Build a shelter, build a fire by hitting rocks together, hunting and scavenging for food. Thats camping.
If anything is electrical it cheapen the experience. I’ll have the GPS for safety reasons only.
Camping for me would be the 8 months I spent in the bush in Kenya observing the social dynamics of monitor lizards. Five tents, eight people, and a Land Rover that habitually broke down at the worst possible moment. Here is what camping means to me:
Bathroom= hand-dug latrine, behind a bush or rock, or downstream from your water supply
Food= ramen noodles bought by the carton on the once-a-month trip into Nairobi to re-supply, coupled with substandard canned goods, bottled water, chemical-tasting ‘purified’ water from filters and tablets, tea, and insects for the adventurous. (Termites are sugary.) Occasionally some wacky local homebrew that tasted suspiciously of stale bread and paint thinner.
Bathing= downstream from your water supply
Power supply= HA!
Protection= zippered tents, insect repellent, mosquito netting, sunshade, loose clothing, big hats, heavy boots, and a rifle. There were lots of rocks and pointy sticks about in a pinch.
In Case of Medical Emergency= basic first-aid kit, quinine, rubbing alcohol, gauze bandages, Lariam, tetracycline, anti-venin kit, topical antibacterial salve, soap, some crushed aspirin, and one one-third-filled and jealously guarded bottle of Old Grandad.
This is camping. Do not speak to me of “recreational vehicles” and “campsites”. These things are an abomination in the eyes of god and man.
One time when I was just out of high school I had to sleep on a park bench all night waiting for a bus. Does that count as well- it was sort of ‘urban camping’.