Camping with a combination of vehicle and canvas is a problematic activity in North America. Too often you are squeezed in beside huge RVs ("Recreational Vehicles") which are filled with all kinds of luxuries and devices you are attempting to leave behind.

You could always leave your vehicle somewhere and head for the hills — there are many backcountry camp sites where you are almost certainly going to be the sole occupant (something that has only happened to us a few times so far) . However we can't just leave our van in the middle of nowhere — it's the container of much of our lives at the moment. So we are forced to use state parks, bureau of land management, sites run by municipalities, and private sites.

These are used by other people, of course. Other people with whining children or yappy dogs. People with loud voices who always rise, full of energy, at 6.00am, shouting into the dawn. People who run generators all day long. People who incessantly chop wood with blunt axes. People who play country and western music. I've written elsewhere about the crappy toilets we've found.

Six Inch Nails

For some reason, the creators of camp sites here seem averse to providing a comfortable surface for tents. Too often we have to hammer (literally, using a tool-box hammer) our "pegs" (actually six inch nails — we've long ago discarded the wimpy and soon bent-double aluminium pegs that came with our tents) into something resembling degraded tarmacadam. I can see the point if you are protecting some fragile environment, but most camp sites are an artificial maze of roadways and RV pads. So why no grass, or chick weed, or clover? We manage to provide soft surfaces in Europe, so why not here? Even sand would be better than concrete!

Ironically, what grass there is is usually reserved to RVs, the occupants of which spend all their time inside watching TV anyway.