Labor of Love

Don’t get me wrong, I love camping. In fact, Michael had never even camped before meeting me. All of our camping gear was either mine or we have purchased it together. Part of why I love it so much is I love nature. I love the smell and feeling I get when I am sitting around a campfire with a drink in my hand. I love that I can bring my dogs and they enjoy exploring as much as I do. What I love the most is being able to blow up our raft and just float on the water for a few hours and do nothing but relax. All of that, to me, is better than 5 star accommodations any day of the week.

A friend of mine once asked me why Americans, he’s from Puerto Rico, like to pretend they are homeless when they spend most of their lives trying to obtain “The American Dream”? I brushed it off at the time, but he did have a point. My only answer, logical or not, is that it’s a labor of love. You spend days before packing and getting everything ready for your trip. You drive out to the middle of nowhere, and usually pay for an absurdly small spot to call your own. Then you spend at least an hour setting everything up to turn around and take it down a few days later. Really, there is no logical reason for why I love to camp…I just know I love it.

Even crazier is that we know that the campgrounds will be ridiculously full this weekend because it’s Labor Day weekend. Every adventurous person, like us, will be out enjoying nature. We’ve decided that in order to alleviate some of the annoyance of not being able to be alone with nature, we are going to go wine tasting on Saturday! Cool, right? Why not head out to the wineries one of the days and come home, to our tent, for our afternoon nap that will feel oh-so-good after a few “tastings”.

I personally think that this is one of the better ideas that my group of friends has come up with, but that’s just me. Everyone that knows me knows I am a Wino.

So here’s to my upcoming trip. I will make sure to toast you all as I sip on my wine and relax in front of the campfire. J