I spent a few decades (really) casually mentioning to anyone who would listen, how I had never been camping and that I wanted someone to take me. Finally, in 2016, Peter went out and got us a 3-person tent, and we went to Target and got a couple of sleeping bags. We went to Enchanted Rock State Natural Area. We got there too late to get wood from the park store, so after hiking the rock and the nearby trail to check out the primitive sites, we pretty much just ate some food, drank some bourbon (shhh) and went to bed early. About 2 hours later, a huge thunderstorm woke us up by repeatedly smacking us in the face with our tent. We ended up having to bail out and sleep in the back of his SUV. That was my first time to camp. We didn’t take a single picture.
Enchanted Rock is a beautiful park in the Texas Hill Country that encompasses a huge pink granite dome, which you can climb. There’s about 11 miles of trail to hike, which we didn’t really do. The trails close 30 minutes before sunset, and we got there with just enough time to summit the dome. I’m looking forward to going back out there and primitive camping for a couple of days to explore those trails.
I wanted to go camping again right away. Within seconds of getting home, I wanted more. A year went by and Peter and I never got our schedules together to make it happen. He also didn’t want it quite as badly as I did. None of my friends are regular campers – or if they are, they do it with their families. Sooooo… If I wanted to camp again, I was really going to have to do it alone. 2018 came around. I realized I was turning 50 this year. For the last few marquis birthdays, I’ve been saving up money and then treating myself to something new – tennis lessons, a couple of weeks at a horse ranch. This time it was going to be camping, I decided.
So I started trying to learn how to do it alone, and planning for my first solo car camping trip. It sounds funny to me now, since it’s truly the easiest thing in the world. But difficulty wasn’t the thing keeping me from doing it. The how-to mystery around it all was. How do you pick a campground/park? How do you reserve a spot? How do you pick which spot you want? What kind of gear do you need to car camp? To day-hike? Is it safe to camp alone? Hike alone? Especially as a woman? What would I eat?
I’m not the kind of person that just wings it very well. I really like to know what I’m doing – otherwise I’ll just do things in a big of a vague blind panic and not really enjoy myself. I’m nothing if not a planner. So I started learning and planning.
Welcome to YouTube – a how-to seeker’s best friend. It’s where I met Jessica “Dixie” Mills – an inspiration to so very many women looking to experience the outdoors on their own. Her channel Homemade Wanderlust answered at least 50% of my questions, and finding her channel led me down the rabbit hole to the other channels that would end up answering the other 50%.