May 12, 2015
An Op-Ed By The Journal-Picayune Outdoors Editor
Ferrysville, Wisconsin
The Unfortunate Status of Camping in the U.S.
You meet all kinds of people with all kinds of camping styles at American campgrounds. It took a long time, but I've finally come to accept those huge recreational vehicles. For many years I called them "eyesores." I even taught my kids to point at RVs and say, with an air of condescension, "THAT'S not camping." Nowadays, eyesores are the norm. Tents are the minority. You have to go backpacking--or stealth camping in the bike world- to avoid them.
As I said, I have come to accept eyesores in campgrounds because the owners take their showers and their dumps inside of them, leaving the public restrooms and showers for the REAL campers. Imagine fighting for two shower stalls or two toilets in a campground with 80-100 campsites if everyone was tent camping. Ohhhh, the lines.
Here's the crux of my editorial: There are tent campers who drive their cars from their campsites to the restrooms. Have they no shame? Sometimes it's only a 50-yard walk, but THEY DRIVE! These people give tent campers a bad name. Camping used to mean "roughing it." Now it means watching your big screen TV and taking a hot shower in your eyesore, or else driving your car from your tent all the way to the restroom.
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Camp coffee in the morning sure brings out the poet in me. It also gives me the energy to get going and ride at least 20 miles before I need any kind of food. Breakfast schmeakfast.
The flatness and the industrial nature of the southern part of The Father of Waters was beautiful in its own way, but where the river narrows and high green bluffs take over, that's where the more traditional ideal of beauty begins. I'm done trying to capture that beauty in my photographs. It just doesn't work. You will have to discover it for yourself.
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A week ago I was thinking to myself, "what a waste of time it was to bring gloves, a wool cap, and biking tights." I wasn't thinking that this morning. No, I was thinking, "Greg, that was a stroke of genius and incredible foresight to bring gloves, a wool cap, and biking tights." It was cold.
It's true that I am a year-round bike rider from Minnesota, so you might be wondering what I'm whining about. I'm not whining. I'm reporting. But it would not have been efficient for your correspondent to try to pack Sorel boots, snow pants, and a down jacket like he wore when he commuted to and from work on cold days. Those things would not fit into his panniers.
So your Journal-Picayune correspondent bundled up with everything he had and crossed The Great Sewer into a new state--Wisconsin. North of Prairie du Chein, he had almost non-stop views of Old Man River. Then he was sweating under all those layers.
In Ferrysville I came to a crossroads, much as Robert Johnson and I did in Clarksville, MS. This time, however, I had some more important things to consider. First was my daughter. Last week she broke her collarbone in a skateboarding wipeout. (I know the steep hill that caused her wipeout. She was crazy to even go down that thing. I am so proud of her!)
Yesterday her doctors determined she needed surgery to repair the broken bone with plates and screws. She is undergoing that surgery as I write this and I feel bad that I'm not there to support her.
Secondly, my wife and I have our wedding anniversary coming up on May 21st. I don't think I can get up to Lake Superior and back before that. So instead of going straight north from La Crosse, I am going to angle westward to my home in Hastings, MN for a week or so to be with my wife and daughter. Then I'll plan a different route to Lake Superior and continue on after that.
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Today's ride: 30 miles (48 km)
Total: 1,425 miles (2,293 km)
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