“GLAMPING” AT MUSTANG ISLAND STATE PARK

When we went to the School of White Water Kayaking in Arkansas last year we saw some young men with a very elaborate tent set-up. Not only did they have a large tent, but they had a tent with an added area under which they had a table and their cooking gear. Their tent looked something like this:

When we talked to the guys and told them how much we liked their tent, they laughed and said, “Yeah. We don’t like camping. We like glamping.” I thought that was a pretty good word for describing “glamourous camping.”

Before I wrote this blog, however, I wanted to get some “official” definition of glamping. According to Wikipedia the word "glamping" first appeared in the United Kingdom in 2005 and was used to describe luxury tent camping.  A whole glamping industry has evolved around glamping and has taken the concept to new and, in some cases, absurd heights. Here, for example, is one opinion of how camping differs from glamping.

Here is another. You gotta have a welcome mat!

If you are interested in seeing some (in my opinion) absurd examples of glamping, follow this link: https://indonesia.tripcanvas.co/bali/glamping-bali/

A few years ago Donna and I stayed at an eco-resort in Tulum, Mexico for our 25th wedding anniversary. The resort, called Sueños Tulum (Tulum Dreams), consists of a number of thatch-roofed huts with comfortable beds and small bathroom. There is no electricity in the rooms during the day nor are there telephones, TV's, CD players or other electronic luxuries. From the beach the huts look like this.

We didn’t know it at the time but we were, based on the extended definition of the term, we were glamping and we liked it!

So, after camping out twice on the ground in a tent that was no more than three feet high, Donna decided to research tent options. Glamping sounded like a good idea to us. She found a Napier tent that had an added feature—a screen room. This is what the tent looks like.

  

I’m not so sure that the tents I just described could provide a “luxurious” camping experience but, when used in combination with an SUV or truck with a camper shell, you can get pretty close.

Anyway, you may remember that we recently had some really cold days, so cold that our fountain almost froze solid. When the weather warmed up a bit we checked the forecast and decided that it would be nice to go camping at Mustang Island State Park. We chose the State Park over the National Seashore because the primitive sites have port-o-johns and water every few hundred feet or so. We thought the beach might be crowded but we were willing to sacrifice privacy for those few conveniences. 

When we arrived we found that the beach was not crowded.  In fact, it was essentially empty.

The weather forecast the day before we left indicated that it would be partially sunny and in the sixties when we arrived. I’m not quite sure what “partially sunny” means but you’ll note that the sky is pretty dark. I also doubt that the temperature was in the sixties.

Anyway, we set up the tent as shown below.

After we set up the tent Donna got started on making dinner while I fed the dogs. You might be able to tell from the picture below that the dogs have long hair.

Of course they lay down while they waited for dinner, thus getting sand in their hair. Thanks to them, this is what the inside of the tent looked like after a while.

Fortunately Donna had bought a Dewalt Cordless Wet-Dry Vac.

I’ll admit that when she got it I wondered if and when we would ever use it. Well, I found out right away. It is a great tool that I highly recommend.

After we set up the tent, Donna was able to put the camping stove on the picnic table and prepare dinner.

Actually, she had made dinner in a thermal cooker early in the morning so we were ready to eat as soon as we arrived. A thermal cooker, shown below, is like a big thermos bottle. You start a meal, put it in the thermal cooker, take it to where you are going and, about four hours later, your meal is cooked and warm. Not only is it convenient for camping, it saves energy as well.

Afterwards we built a camp fire and relaxed. It was pretty chilly outside and the fire lulled us to sleep. Below is a picture of Donna wearing a relatively heavy jacket and holding Mookie while getting warmed up by the fire.

Finally it was time for bed. Sleeping was great until it started raining. That’s when we discovered that the tent was a bit leaky.  So, in between the periods of rain, we set up the extension to the tent called the Screen Room. 

The screen room provided a covered space in which we could store stuff.  Better yet (from my perspective) it provided a space in which Donna could cook. This is not like cooking inside a tent. The screen room has the ground open below you, a large door open to the side and two screened windows. We did not have any issues regarding cooking inside it.

Donna’s cooking was facilitated by the fact that she had purchased a “Kamp-Rite Kwik Pantry with Cook Table.” The Kamp-Rite Kwik Pantry provides space for cooking as well as food or utensil storage in one compact unit. It has a rollout aluminum tabletop that attaches to the top of the frame, a detachable wind shield to protect your camp stove from the wind when you are using it outside, a pantry divided into two zippered storage sections, each with three shelves and two outside storage pockets. It only takes a couple of minutes to set it up in s and folds down compactly to fit in a convenient carry bag. When you are considering camping equipment, storage size is very important.  A picture of the pantry is below.

But there was one more item Donna bought that made camping a bit more glamorous—a collapsible “flexware” sink.  When expanded the sink is 5.90″ high, 11.42” deep and 14.96” wide. Rather than going to a spigot in the rain to clean our dishes, we could (using biodegradable soap, of course) clean them right in the screen room on top of the pantry,

  

For cleaning the dishes Donna bought Mrs. Meyer's Clean Day Dish Soap, a biodegradable soap made natural products. She bought the Honeysuckle variety of the soap because the bottle says, “Honeysuckle is believed to be soothing...nice to think that these lovely blossoms lend an air of calm as you clean.” Calm is something you want when you are camping in the rain and the dogs are bugging you.

With the pantry, the sink, the vacuum cleaner and the extra tent space we were getting pretty close to Glamping.  We have found the pantry so useful we’ve decided to buy a second one to provide more counter top surface.

You can see how Donna used the Kwik Pantry as well as the wet spots in the tent in the GoPro video I took. The GoPro was, by the way, an early Christmas present from Donna. I’m still figuring out how to use it. I was going to by the GoPro video editing software but discovered that I could download Windows Movie Maker for free. It seems to work just fine.

So—what do you do when you are camping in the rain? I never thought it would be possible for me to do this, but you lead a dog’s life—you lie around and sleep. The dogs loved it.

The DeWalt vacuum got put to good use the next day. Since it is also a wet vac I was able to suck up a lot of the water that got into the tent as well as the sand. 

Finally it was time to pack up and leave. Note the shadow in the picture below. Of course the sun had come out!

So, with not much of an expenditure, you can turn your camping experiences into Glamping experiences.

Be sure to visit my YouTube channel: Greg's INTO (I'm not too old) Channel

Introduction

Introduction

Why am I calling this blog “wet exit?” I’m an expert at it, that’s why.

Let me explain. About three years ago my wife Donna found a Groupon coupon for a one-half price kayak trip along the San Antonio Riverwalk, a tourist area of San Antonio. The San Antonio River Walk (also known as Paseo del Río) is a network of walkways along the banks of the San Antonio River, one story beneath the streets of Downtown San Antonio, Texas. It is a hugely popular tourist area so, as you can imagine, the San Antonio River that flows through it is quite still. The city does not want anyone to fall into the river and be swept away by raging water. They may be dissolved by all the chemicals in the water, but they will not be swept away.

Anyway, I had been in a canoe before, but never a kayak, so we decided to try it. The kayaks provided to us were “sit on top” kayaks, meaning that if you fell out, an unlikely event give the placid nature of the San Antonio River, you just had to figure out how to get back in or just be able to go a few feet to one side of the river. There was virtually no chance of drowning. We enjoyed the experience and decided to explore kayaking some more.

At first we rented tandem kayaks—not a good idea for two people who want to be in control of everything. Next we rented individual kayaks and took them out on a lake. It only took two or three outings for us to decide that lake kayaking was boring.

We then discovered that San Marcos, Texas has a “park and play” white water park. After watching about a hundred YouTube videos on white water kayaking we decided to take a white water kayaking lesson. It just so happened that there are a number of kayaking instructors in the area so we were able to book lessons with no problem.

I was kind of shocked at the size of the boats we were given for our lesson. They were what are known as “play boats” and were probably not the best choice for an introduction to white water kayaking. Anyway, after we were shown the boats we were going to use we were given spray skirts, shown how to get into the spray skirts and then how to put them on the boat.

The instructor then said, “The first thing you have to learn is how to get out of the boat in case you flip over.”

I would have thought that the first thing you needed to know was how to get into the boat. It turns out that knowing how to get out of a boat when you have flipped is a very necessary skill because you will flip when you are first learning to kayak in white water. 

I have flipped over so many times and have wet exited so many times I consider myself an expert at the skill. Of course, any kayaker’s goal is not to flip over at all. Achieving that goal takes a lot of practice.