Can You Camp as a Romantic Getaway?

Chapter 13 of my work-in-progress camping memoir

Photo by Kate Joie on Unsplash

I started working on a camping memoir five years ago but abandoned it after a year of detailed work because the time just wasn’t right. Now I am ready to get back to the work I started and turn it into a true memoir of the first 21 years of marriage and parenting. If you want to get regular updates on this project, please consider upgrading to a paid subscription.

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When I was ten, my dad and his younger siblings bought my uncle and his new bride a brand new tent for their wedding gift. They were to use the new tent, and the accompanying camping supplies, for their honeymoon, which was a planned camping trip immediately following the wedding.

Something about that just didn’t seem right. At ten, I didn’t really understand sex or honeymoon expectations for newlywed couples. I did understand that it was supposed to be a romantic trip for two people who had just gotten married, and everything I had ever been taught about romance did not include a tent and what I thought when with it: campfire smoke, bug spray, sunburns, and sleeping without air conditioning.

Twenty-seven years later, as Jeff and I were planning our fifteenth anniversary trip to New Orleans, that question came back to me when a college friend asked, “You’re going camping for your anniversary?”

What had once seemed unnatural and unthinkable has now become our usual (although not always) go-to for romantic getaways. Sometimes we do it to save money, sometimes we do it because we really just want the freedom to explore, and sometimes it’s a combination of the two.

Romantic getaways weren’t the initial reason we took up camping. When we were young and childless we just enjoyed packing up our tent, getting away from the city, and spending some time hanging out alone together or occasionally with friends and family.

Once we had kids we discovered the inherent value in spending time together away from our offspring, and while we initially lived close enough to grandparents to leave our children with them for the weekend, spending money on hotels and activities was still expensive. We took our first real kid-free trip to celebrate our tenth wedding anniversary, traveling to the Great Smoky Mountains and finding a deal on a cabin for a couple of days during my Christmas break. But even with the internet deals, it was still more than we probably should have spent on some quality couple time, and we struggled to see when and how we could do it again.

Two years later, Jeff used our planned child-free trip to convinced me to get back into camping. I made the reservations at a private campground with the full intention of tent camping over the Fourth of July, confident that the camping spot would be perfect for our larger tent.

Then we bought the hybrid camper. Suddenly my concerns about the potential heat and humidity in Pennsylvania over the Fourth of July weekend were a moot point. Our new camper had an air conditioner and a refrigerator. I no longer had to worry about the potential for being uncomfortable while camping. I could just happily plan for our trip back in time.

We arrived at a private campground well before dark, set up our camper, and started to learn a new camping routine. We went from tent experts to camper rookies. We let down the bunks, plugged in the electric, connected the water, made our bed, and then I started making dinner on our outdoor stove. For the first time in a long time, it was quiet. I had forgotten what it was like to finally be forced out of the house. Jeff and I were able to have a real conversation without the interruption of kids or media.

That’s not to say that the stop wasn’t trouble free. As we both crawled into bed, we suddenly felt a give in the bunk. We scrambled out of bed and promptly headed over to the bunk that was intended for our kids, thankful that we had noticed the issue before we were in the throes of passion. We left that bunk closed for the rest of our trip. Our salesman agreed to fix the camper bunk the week after we returned so that we wouldn’t be without a camper for the rest of the season. The rebuilt bunk was solid, but for the rest of the summer I cautiously crept into bed and breathed a sigh of relief when nothing happened.

The next day, we traveled across the Pennsylvania mountains, making more history stops at the Johnstown Flood National Memorial and the Flight 93 Memorial, somber stops that also filled my need for passport stamps and connection with significant historical events.

With daylight to spare, we pulled into the private campground where we were staying for the next three nights. We had no idea what to expect. I had made the reservations months before with the intention of needing a site just large enough for a tent. However, when we decided to buy a camper shortly before our trip, I made a last-minute call to ensure that our new camper would still fit on the site we had reserved. I think I double checked four different times to make sure we would still be able to park in the spot I had reserved.

If tent building had been one of the first tests of marriage, camper parking would become the test of our second decade of marriage. The whole disastrous ordeal nearly ruined our mini-vacation before it began. Remember, this the only the second time Jeff had ever parked our camper and this was the first time he needed my assistance. I had no idea which direction to tell Jeff to turn or how to communicate with him the best way to do so. The site had a small gully and several trees and Jeff finally gave up, disconnected, changed angles, and then reconnected to get going in the right direction. He got frustrated with me, I got frustrated with my inability to help him and then I got frustrated with him for not understanding that I didn’t know what I was doing.

I wish I could say that I’ve gotten better about helping my husband with difficult parking jobs. The truth is, he’s just gotten better at figuring out how to park our camper while I run back and forth and attempt to communicate with him what he needs to do next.

When we were finally parked, I was thankful that Jeff had talked me into the camper before our trip. The July temperatures had peaked in the 90s with high humidity. Our original plan included a tent with fans. Our new plan included an air conditioner.

I could finally fully accept our decision to become one of “those” people who “camp” without a tent.

The next day we parked at the Visitor Center, exploring the new museum and watching available films. We caught a shuttle to the George Spangler Farm Civil War field hospital site, the location of one of many field hospitals in the weeks and even months following the battle. And then we prepared for a late afternoon bike ride.

Despite the heat, we did what we had been dreaming about doing since the moment we started planning the trip: we followed the motor tour using our bikes instead of our truck, getting up close and personal with the battlefields in a way that we never could from the comfort of our air-conditioned truck. We had both spent the past six months getting into the best shape of our lives. I had finally lost all of the baby weight from both pregnancies, and then some, and we were ready to put our physical fitness to the test.

We had been to Gettysburg once before, when we were driving through on our way home from Washington, D.C. There were a couple of things that struck me the first time we visited Gettysburg. One, I had never really realized when I heard about the battle of Gettysburg that it happened in the city of Gettysburg. Yes, most of the fighting took place in fields, but there was this sleepy little town that was suddenly in the middle of a battle that many consider to be the turning point of the war. Second, I didn't realize the scope of the battlefields, the vastness of the area that the Union had to defend and the Confederate army had to attack. I began to understand the size and scope then, but our sixteen-mile bike ride brought those realities home.