Blue Ridge Camping: A Return Into the (not so) Wild

Gretchen, Sophie, and Tara in “the zoo” while camping. Their zoo habitat was even replete with a water feature - for drinking and bathing!

UPDATED: 2/5/2023

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Life is all about perspective.

We went camping for a couple of nights earlier this summer at Loft Mountain Campground, a short drive up Skyline Drive, nestled in the Blue Ridge Mountains about an hour northwest of Charlottesville.

Our SUV was packed to the gills with all matter of perishable and non-perishable human and dog supplies. Also humans and dogs. We had to dig our camping box out of the basement and dust it off. Somehow we hadn’t gone camping in 8 years. This is one of those unnerving moments of adulthood where something that feels familiar and recent hasn’t occurred in many years.

And those years have also changed my perspective on life.

Dustin and I first camped together half a year after we started dating. He had grown up camping. I had not. Unless you count a school-wide camp out in kindergarten or setting up a tent in your own backyard, a great idea until the lawn sprinklers kick on in the morning (such is the gluttony of Southern California, land of drought). Our first camping trip was interesting to say the least. I was young and naïve enough to assume that Dustin would get everything packed since I didn’t have had the slightest idea of what to take camping. His idea of packing was grabbing camping supplies out of his parent’s basement in the evening on the day we were to leave. We had barely made it to our camp site, which was a relatively isolated walk-in site, before it got dark. We set the tent up in the dimming moments of summer twilight and discovered the zipper was damaged and the tent couldn’t fully close. I’m pretty sure by morning we had a lot of visitors of the bug and spider variety, and I am not exactly a fan of creepy crawlies. Or heck, having to go outside in the dark in the middle of night to use the bathroom.

I know. It’s shocking to consider that I ever camped again.

I let a little time pass first. I put the trauma in the past. I also desperately wanted to travel and in the lean years after college, camping is a pretty affordable option.

And so, we started camping, typically 1-2 times per year in the Blue Ridge Mountains of Virginia. We quickly learned which camp sites were the best (as defined by beautiful views and privacy), that it was smart to make reservations for said sites 6 months in advance, which was the earliest possible. It goes without saying that I was the one who planned ahead and booked those sites.

We started getting smart about packing for camping and developed a packing list that had constant additions as we learned how to improve upon prior gaps in supplies. Two of my earliest and favorite additions to our camping supplies are metal S’mores sticks that periscope and reusable plastic wineglasses where the stem unscrews from the main part of the glass and tucks itself neatly into a smaller space. Neither are particularly necessary or practical of course but camping without wine and s’mores is no camping for me!

Fairly early in our camping years, we added our first yellow Labrador Retriever, Charlotte, into our family. The first time we took her camping, she didn’t settle down for one instant. The thrill of the smells, the outdoors, the people. This was a pup who resided in an apartment building in the metro Washington, DC area. The moment we got in the car to drive home, she was down for the count and slept like she had to make up every missed moment of sleep. A couple of years later, we added our second yellow Lab, Sophie, and brought her along, buying a larger tent as we expanded the size of our dog family. And then when we decided we wanted dog fur to be visible on our clothes no matter what color we wore, we added our first chocolate Lab, Tara, to the mix. And then we stopped camping as frequently. Taking three dogs camping was - in a word - exhausting. And when we added a fourth chocolate Lab, Gretchen, a year later, camping moved to the back-burner unintentionally.

When we last camped about 8 years ago, we had three dogs. We had only left the country once together. Life felt unsettled as it does in that first decade or so of adult life.

From the last time we packed our tent away to the moment we unfurled it this summer (fortunately with all zippers in tact!), we have grown and changed but stayed the same in the important ways. We have added younger family members and lost others. We said goodbye to Charlotte a couple of months ago after a memorable nearly 14 years together. In her stead, Gretchen enjoyed (tolerated?) her first camping trip. We have gotten smarter and planned easy meals (hot dogs extravaganza!) and brought along a dog fence to create an enclosure (fondly referred to as “the zoo”). We are now completely confident in and happy with our life decisions. We have traveled to so many amazing places as our careers have afforded us that ability. We have visited places we had never heard of when we last went camping (hello, Malta) and places we never dreamed we would go (Iceland).

The biggest surprise of it all, though, is the pandemic that we are a year and a half into.

We have been incredibly cautious for the entirety of the pandemic and only visited with the first member of my family in late May of this year. We are fortunate to not have to leave the house or put ourselves in danger and recognize that is a luxury not everyone has. So this camping trip was a big outing for us. The halcyon days pre-Delta.

In some ways it is like coming full circle to those earlier years where all we can do is travel a few hours from home to camp - this time not due to monetary reasons, rather health considerations.

Like I said, life is about perspective.

Right now, getting to enjoy the Virginia mountains feels like a big adventure. And, if I’m honest, I wasn’t particularly comfortable the whole time. While I rarely ran into anyone else in the bathroom, I was the only one donning a facemask. I also wore a mask when taking a shower first thing in the morning before anyone else was in the bathhouse, a benefit of being an early riser these days. Wearing a mask in the shower mostly worked okay in case anyone is wondering. Fortunately I had a dry back-up, though!

The sunset and sunrises were spectacular. We had an obstructed view (thanks trees) of what can only be described as a blood red sun at both sunrise and sunset. We had never seen anything like it. There was a brief rain storm on our second day. After watching the clouds move in and hearing the thunder creep closer, we stowed our belongings. At the first hint of a rain drop, I closed the book I was reading, got our three dogs out of “the zoo” and crept into the tent where Dustin was already resting. I fell asleep curled up at the foot of the bed since that was the only spot the dogs left for me. Two adults and three 50-60 pound dogs on a full-sized air mattress in a slightly humid tent with the patter of rain on the roof.

We left a day earlier than planned after two nights instead of three. A rain system was coming in and while camping through a brief storm is doable, a steady downpour is not particularly fun (as we have learned through prior experience).

The pups slept, completely conked out in the car, and we made it almost all the way home before the storm hit.

It’s hard to know right now what our perspective should be for the future. The pandemic is nebulous. It’s hard to know when we will feel that other travel is safe again, whether domestic or international. And of course we know other people are making different decisions. And I can’t help but wonder where we’ll be in 8 more years, what new experiences we will have by then or how far into that time period the scorpion’s tail of this pandemic will flick.

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