Car Camping (The Great Camps for People Who Can't Afford Great Camps)

Phil Terrie makes a really good point when he discusses the "paradoxical pair of cultural impulses" informing the idea of car camping (Terrie, 128). I went car camping for the first time this past summer with Emma from Janelle's class (in Nickerston State Park, a wilderness area in Cape Cod, admittedly not the Adirondacks), and was astonished by how many people go into these nature preserves only to live out of their car or RV. Being in a place as densely settled as Cape Cod, it was nice to be able to get in the car and drive to other places when we didn't want to just stay in the park, but I also wasn't really camping in the sense that I had done so many times before. To be quite honest, I didn't mind at all the access to running water and it's no doubt that many people are enticed by the cheap per night cost. I definitely found that car camping is accessible to all social classes, but most interestingly I think, is what Terrie concludes is the impetus for the car camping phenomenon: "it simultaneously took a family back to nature and employed the latest in American technology" (Terrie, 128). Car camping is a clear example of what we've been talking about in class about the nostalgia people feel when not surrounded by nature, but also the simultaneous reluctance to fully give up the amenities and creature comforts of this day and age. Just as the wealthy moved into the Adirondacks with their fully-stocked great camps and double decker outhouses, the rest of the public can "go back to nature" with the more accessible fashion of camping out next to the trunk of their car.