Greetings Glampers!
As we all hunker down and await the peak of winter, now is the perfect time to start daydreaming of Springtime Glamping! Naturally, Laura and I initially think big. Grand Canyon? Yellowstone? Badlands? So many choices! But for us, our go-to first camp of the season is our local favorite, the Wichita Mountain National Wildlife Refuge.
Greetings Glampers!
Before we turned the Labor Day corner into Autumn, Laura and I wanted to sneak in one last “Hotter ‘n 100 Degrees” Texoma summer season glamping experience. Luckily, the weather gods were more than happy to oblige (104 degrees! Yeesh!) as we discovered a new gem in Northern Texas: Eisenhower State Park.
Dear glampers,
It’s hard to believe summer is almost officially over. Today we thought it would be fun to discuss one of those things that we all encounter somewhere along our glamping trips: insects in camp. Yuck.
It’s the height of summer in the southern plains and all you want to do is find some sort of water in which to wallow. Just thinking about Pedernales Falls State Park makes it feel ten degrees cooler here. And you have to see it!
Dear glamper,
Some places you just have to get to now because they won’t be around forever. Places that you are amazed you can just walk into… because it just seems so special and a bit fragile. And one of those places also has dinosaurs.
Dear glamper,
As you’ve probably gleaned from this blog, I am a hippie. This can get interesting when you are a military spouse and your husband is “the man” and you move from military town to military town. But then you talk your husband into hiking with llamas near Taos and you refill your crunchy-hippie tank and it’s good.
Happy day of independancy glampers!
As America celebrates its freedom from tyranny and taxation without representation (sorry about that war thing, English Glampers… still friends, right?), TJ and I will be taking a moment to celebrate another Great American Dream: street camping.
Dear fellow glamper,
This year our family had to deal with the biggest challenge we’ve ever had: TJ deployed for six months. Now we are not strangers to deployments, this was his fifth (our fourth since we’ve been married) but it was the first one we experienced as a family of four and the first one in which the kids understood their father was gone. And it was a LONG six months… for everyone. 
Now every “reintegration” has its challenges, and every family knows what works best for them. Something that always carries us through these deployments is planning a special trip once TJ comes home; and this year we picked New Mexico. For us, family adventures are when we are at our best –as a family and as individuals. While TJ was gone, we talked endlessly about this trip: what we would do, where we should stay, what improvements did we want to make to Honeysuckle Manor and our tow vehicle, and it was such a nice way to escape whatever was happening that day, thousands of miles apart, something could do together. Neither TJ nor I had ever been to New Mexico before, and it just sounded like a place we would fall in love with, and we did. Plus, endless quantities of green chile can kick months spent single parenting out of my head.
Hi there, fellow Glampers!
TJ here. Laura made the big jump and wrote the first posts… I thought I’d chime in with a quick follow-up.
Should you be interested in getting started on the path to Glampiness… (er… Glamperness? We’re working on that adjective form.), here are a few tips we’ve found to be key. Behold! A bulletized list:
Rule #1) Be honest about what you enjoy:
Okay, let’s be real. Most of us (I’m especially lookin’ at you, fellas) want to be the rough-necked, lumberjack-bearded, outdoor survival-types that we see on TV and occasionally in hipster neighborhoods. If that’s really who you are, then awesome! But just because hiking 20 miles with a full pack and a whiny toddler sounds like the next generation of “tough mudder,” it doesn’t mean you’ll enjoy it. Know what really is a show-stopper for you. Challenge yourself, and get outside your comfort zone, but don’t torture yourself. Geeze. Also, know what makes everyone else miserable. For the record, apparently Laura’s not keen on all-hot-dog-meal-planning. Wierdo.
Happy Glampers 