Three Nights Camping, I Can’t Tell You Where

I’m back from three nights at an undisclosed camping location in Western Mass. I normally don’t go for such secrecy, but my camping colleagues beseeched me not to reveal its location in a small town to the east, so I shall only describe my camping experiences and try not to spill the beans.

They begin taking reservations for spots here on this lake in early April, and it’s a cat and mouse game to get the coveted waterview camp sites. Unlike many ‘car camping’ experiences I can recall over the years, this one stood out for many reasons.

First of all, you don’t park your car right next to the campsites–so we don’t have that awful car door slamming, car radio and chiming noises, and at night the only thing you hear are the chicadas and the chipmunks. It’s way, way far away from any noise, so it’s a real camping silence.

This campsite also allows fires and they sell fire wood. I don’t know about you, but camping without a fire just isn’t camping. We were also able to drag some big logs over to our fire to burn so we didn’t run out of wood.

Another huge highlight of this camping trip was our choice of personal chef. Eric took care of organizing, shopping and cooking most of the meals–after recruiting a few choppers and helpers.

His cuisine–prepared on the world’s largest frying pan and a satellite-dish sized wok, included corn fritters, pad thai, tempura veggies and fish and chips. It was definitely a highlight having someone with his experience and flair for food behind the cook stove instead of the eight of us, who might have been able to muddle through but probably would have gotten in each other’s way.