How to Plan a Camping Trip, Natalie-Style
- Schedule your trip to immediately follow a major holiday. This way, you ensure the maximum amount of stress while you’re preparing for both the holiday and the trip.
- Make sure you over-commit during the week prior to your trip. Volunteer to lead neighborhood activities such as, oh, Easter egg dying, purchasing food for said activities and commit to several hours right before you’re supposed to leave.
- Forget items on your shopping list so you have to go to the store/library multiple times throughout the week, including on rushed lunch breaks.
- Also make sure you no longer fit in any of your camping clothes. This ensures that you will have to go out shopping for jeans and flannels at the Goodwill during the eleventh hour. An added bonus, you also must wash these clothes, because Goodwill=yuck.
- Start an impossibly demanding work project in the weeks prior, scheduled to finish on your last day of work. This way, you will be pushed to your maximum emotional capacity during an already stressful time.
- Leave all of your packing – including food – until after you get off work at 5:30 PM, especially if you’re leaving at 6:00 AM the following morning.
- By following the above outline, you will successfully have scheduled all the time you usually devote to exercise, cooking healthy meals, and writing, three key factors in maintaining physical, emotional and mental health. If you aren’t exercising and eating, you will especially amplify the hurry, back pain and overall irritation. You will also possibly get sick just in time to do your best outdoor relaxing.
- Chop vegetables for snacks at 11:00 PM the night before.
- Voilà! You overslept from exertion, and are now running hours behind. Fall asleep in the car while your husband drives.
Not that I did any of these this week.
12 Comments
Kate Hall
Ha! I feel like I’ve over-planned my week before a vacation once – not camping though, that’s even worse because camping requires so much planning. Fun post!
Natalie the Singingfool
I KNOW. Camping planning is so much more involved. Somehow, though you’re supposed to be vacationing, it still feels like work.
Chris Plumb
Sounds like my life every time I try to do something important or out of the ordinary. Only when you’ve been married for almost ten years, I get to blame half of these on my spouse, and my spouse will blame the rest on me…so no sleeping in the car ride, but arguing instead.
Don’t worry, that’s part of the fun of vacations.
Natalie the Singingfool
Oh, we’ve participated in our fair share of blame…;) And it turns out, I didn’t sleep on the car ride – I drove. I crashed later, though, and fell asleep on the beach. I now have unsightly tan lines from poorly applied sunscreen.
Ericamos
Hahaha!! You’re like the superhero for pre-camping! I hope you were able to relax most of that stress away at the campground.
Natalie the Singingfool
That was all I was capable of on this trip – resting. It was pretty super-hero worthy, now that I think of it.
winopants
I’m always doing this to myself, making everything more difficult than it needs to be! I hope you had a good time in spite of the stress.
Natalie the Singingfool
I did – I completely crashed on this trip! But oh, it was deliciously uneventful!
Jeneral Insanity
It’s like you’ve watched me pack/plan for every single trip I’ve taken in my life!
Natalie the Singingfool
You didn’t know I was watching you? Muahaha!
S.J. Faerlind
I see we are fans of the same cult of chronic over-scheduling. 🙂 I hope you got a chance to de-stress on your trip!
Natalie the Singingfool
I did, but it was still far too short! Boo!