Let's Go Camping!
Spoiler Alert: I'm definitely Team No Tent
Traditionally, I suppose, when someone says “Let’s Go Camping” it would mean gathering tents, sleeping bags and finding a nice quiet spot in the woods to pitch a tent and sleep under the stars.
I love to travel, and I’m all for finding a nice, quiet place to go camping – to see the stars, to hike in the woods, to be in nature and take a break from the busyness of life. However, I’m going to need a nice bed, heat or A/C, running water and other basic comforts of “home” because, I’m 51 years old and I like to be comfortable.
I’ve been intrigued by RV Life for many years and have even spend a lot of time researching RV’s and Travel Trailers. Several years ago, my husband and I went on a “Day Date” to two of our local RV dealers and looked at almost all the ones that were on the lot! I follow many full-time RVers on social media as well. Maybe this could become on option for us in the future as we look forward to a five- and ten-year life plan.
Luckily for me, one of my friends has a travel trailer that has all the comforts of home and I’m familiar enough with travel trailers to know that this would be my kind of camping. When she bought the travel trailer, she made two decisions:
1. She and her family would go somewhere with the camper once a month
2. Our friend group would go camping once a quarter.
That second decision is how this whole adventure started –
I was cautiously optimistic about our first trip – excited to go on vacation with my friends but also, knowing this would be my first trip in a travel trailer – would I like it? Would it be too complicated? Is the idea of staying in a travel trailer more exciting than the reality of it?
So far, our friend group has been on three trips together.
There are six of us – three introverts and three extroverts, a perfect balance! We’ve all been friends in some capacity for over 15 years, through our Church. We are all moms of adults between the ages of 18-25, we all have full time jobs, we are all married or have been married, and we all love dogs! The hardest part of our trip is coordinating the dates to go but once that’s done, the rest of the trip is peaceful and relaxing.
How do we make it work?
Friend group trips can be tricky and it’s important to know who you are traveling with – we all know each other well enough to know likes/dislikes and express what we individually need to enjoy our vacation without the others being mad about it. If you do group travel, you must be able to express your likes/dislikes AND the others in the group need to respect that! As a group, we just have good chemistry and that’s the most important thing!
On our trip, we all have jobs that are uniquely matched to our personal gifts and talents, so no one feels like they are “working” or doing “a job”. My friend who owns the travel trailer secures the campsite and of course, hauls the travel trailer with her truck; a group text is sent out to see who is bringing what ingredients for meals. One of the friends brings games and puzzles. Aside from our unique job, we know that the others will have everything else taken care of and we literally all just show up at my friend’s house, load up in the truck and head out to our camping destination. For example, I don’t have to worry about meals at all because I know the other five people have that covered. They don’t have to worry about the campfire, s’mores or desserts because that’s my job.
Being the “Firestarter” is my job because it is something I love to do, know how to do well and providing the desserts is something my son loves to do, and he does that well. I’m responsible for the firewood, fire starter/maintenance tools and the building and tending to of the fire. I also provide all the goodies for making s’mores and my son (who is an aspiring baker/chef) makes brownies and cookies.
The entire point of our quarterly camping trips is to rest and relax so we keep a fluid schedule of activities. We go to bed when we are tired, we turn off all alarms and wake up when we are rested. Mostly, we stay off our phones and “unplug” for a few days. Sometimes, we watch movies -on our most recent trip, we watched the sing a long version of Wicked, The Greatest Showman and Shrek the Musical (this is a bit different from Shrek the cartoon and I highly recommend!). Some of us read, some of us work on puzzles and we play games. We take walks around the campground and marvel at all of the options for RV’s and Travel Trailers – everything from a single axle, single person travel trailer to a HUGE tour bus style RV. One of the favorites I’ve seen so far is the Jayco Senaca Super Class C RV on the Freightliner Chassis – what a beautiful rig!
Also, WAY expensive – WOW!!!
I have a lot of favorite things about these trips –
One of them is sitting outside the travel trailer either around the fire or in the CLAM shelter and chatting with all the people who walk by our site, especially if they have a dog!
All of us in our group love dogs and we look forward to the opportunity to meet and pet other people’s dogs – as a generally rule, people who take their dogs camping are generally very friendly AND they have friendly dogs!
Another favorite is just having conversation – most of it we refer to as “solving all the world’s problems” which is of course, not really true but we do spend a lot of time talking about all the things – nothing is really “off limits” in our conversations and if something comes up that we don’t want to talk about, we say that and move on. Mostly, our conversations are a good balance of serious and side-splitting laughter. We’ve decided that no trip is complete unless we spend at least some of the time laughing so hard our stomach muscles hurt!
One of the things that is most important is that we do things as a group or not and no one gets upset about it. We individually do what we want to do and collectively do what we want to do if that sort of makes any sense. The beauty of the travel trailer is that the six of us fit comfortably in it and we can all be together in the same space but not all doing the same thing. We also have outside spaces like the CLAM shelter and the fire pit area to sit.
Three of us, including me, sleep in the bunk room so for me the twin bed of the bottom bunk is also “my space” and on one of the trips, I spent a lot of time one afternoon in that space, reading my book. I highly recommend The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo.
So far, we’ve been to two campgrounds, with one visited twice!
Our first trip was to Hideaway RV Resort, and this was our “shakedown trip” – we arrived on Sunday and went home on Wednesday. This particular campground is situated along the Intracoastal Waterway, and we had a nice time watching the boats go sailing by! We were also blessed by the FULL moon on our trip and while my photos don’t do the moon any justice, just know that it was beautiful!
Our second and third trips were to the KOA Campground in New Bern, NC. Situated alongside the Neuse River, this is a beautiful spot! During our first trip, we had to leave a day early to get home prior to Tropical Storm Debby making landfall near our hometown. We found out later, that the campground refunded my friend the one night that we missed and so we made the plan to return there for our next trip!
Some of us in our group are stand up paddleboarders and kayakers and some of us are not. I am one of the ones in the “not” category. On our first trip, some of us got the paddleboards in the river and the others of us sat on the pier and cheered on (eh, lovingly heckled) our friend who did SUP for the first time! Two of our group rented a paddleboat and took that for a spin on the river! One thing we scheduled in our day was time to walk down to the river and watch the sunset!
Our second trip to this campground was in early March and still a bit too chilly for SUP, but we still went for a walk down to their pier and had some fun time trying to take group photos! One of our friends made us all shirts and we wore them for the photo shoot!
Three trips in a travel trailer and I’ve learned a lot – my friend who owns the TT does all the set-up work, but she doesn’t mind me learning and asking questions. She’ll let us help, too but there’s a routine to setting up and then getting the TT ready to head home that she has to make sure nothing is forgotten.
It’s not a complicated set up, it just has to be done the right way.
The trailer has to be detached from the truck, then leveled, then the slides have to be let out and the black tank and grey tank hose is connected to the campsite sewer hookup. The water is hooked up and then we set up the CLAM tent, the chairs, etc.
Once the trailer is detached from the truck, leveled and the slides set out, the rest of us can get the inside/outside set up and everyone just picks a job and does it.
I’ll remind you that there are six women on this trip who are all very successful, accomplished professionals and Moms. All three times we’ve been complimented on the efficiency of our set up and breakdown!
I think I was just a few hours into our first trip when I decided that travel trailer or RV camping was the best thing! The reality of it is just as exciting as the dreaming about it!
That cautious optimism I had before our first trip has turned into pure optimism and a looking forward to our quarterly trips!
Setting up the TT isn’t complicated – there’s just a bit of a learning curve and a certain routine that has to be followed. Living in it isn’t complicated at all – it’s literally just like living in a much smaller version of a house! There’s Heat and A/C, running water, a fridge/freezer, beds, a couch, a recliner, a full bathroom with shower and a kitchen with coffeemaker, stove and a toaster oven. The configuration of my friends TT is such that there’s a perfect amount of space for the six of us and we have each claimed “our spot”. Three trips in and we’ve figured out what works and what doesn’t work, and we have adjusted accordingly so that the vacation is really the ideal restful respite that it is designed to be.
I LOVE to travel, and “Let’s Go Camping” is definitely one of my new favorite phrases – you know, right up there with “Let’s Book a Flight!” Regardless of how you travel, go solo or go with friends but the most important thing is to GO – we ALL need time away from the busyness of life, to have the opportunity to have fluid schedules and unplug from phones for a few days.
RESOURCES:
Planning a trip with friends can be tricky and my friend Tracey Massey has a great podcast on how to navigate this:
The Art of Planning a Girls Trip
Campgrounds:
We have visited Hideaway Campground near North Myrtle Beach, SC and the KOA Campground New Bern, NC.
I’ll also recommend Mountain River Family Campground in Newland, NC. I have friends who have camped there and LOVE it! Also, if you aren’t’ familiar with their recovery story post Hurricane Helene, it’s such an inspiring story of hope and perseverance!
Social Media follows:
These are all on Instagram, in no particular order
the.silvermermaid: solo female traveling in an Airstream towed by a Jeep.
gills_on_wheels: Empty Nest RVers.
travelingjackie: 2025 Best Travel Podcast winner. Also has a truck camper.
thetravelingtitans: full time travel family.worldschool.RV life
bighearttinyspaces: travel Mom – she travels full time with her three kids.