Camping.

Camping. The word brings to mind a myriad of thoughts and memories.

There was the time I camped on Assateague Island. Their official bird is the Mosquito. For real. That’s a good story. My husband is rolling his eyes as he reads this. The bottomline is we camped in a swamp in the summer. There wasn’t enough Deet to make that a pleasant experience.

Then there was the time I camped in the Daintree Rainforest in Australia. In the rain. Spiders are large there. They call them tarantulas.

I “camped” in Europe. Under a white plastic bench on the bow of a ship headed to Greece while Ivan Drago (remember him from Rocky) and all of his commrads danced and sang around us. For real. I also “camped” in Zurich, Switzerland, outside a 30 foot statue of Michael Jackson, and then there was the parking lot in Athens. All lovely experiences.

I camped in Virginia where the weatherman said it would be unseasonably cold that night. Whatever. Unseasonably cold in October should NOT mean snow flurries.

And then there was the famous Mudslide of 2012. Well famous to those of us who camped on it. Awesome.