19Apr2024
Camping With Your Two Gay Dads
My very first camping trip was with my two gay dads, Alan and Sean. I was 12 years old. It was the first time mom had allowed me to spend time away with them and I was determined to make it go as smoothly as possible and therefore envisage future trips. A Seemingly Great Idea Alan (my biological dad) was hell-bent on making my trip to the great outdoors the ultimate camping experience (I’m sur
Continue Reading18Apr2024
Camping In the Back Garden – Well, Almost…
Camping in the back garden with your mates may not sound very scary but wait until you try it... "Turn the light on! Turn the light on now!" It was Emma's first time camping and so far, it wasn't going too well. Unfortunately the garden light turned on when there was a movement and every 2 minutes it would switch off. After 5 seconds of hysterical screaming she would jump out of the tent and st
Continue Reading16Apr2024
Pitch Imperfect: The Wrong Place to Pitch Your Tent
Camping! Much like purchasing real estate, the three most important things are location, location and location. I learned this the hard way. It was about five years ago now, although my therapist remembers it as if it was yesterday. I'm a single dad with five children to entertain each summer. They had been nagging away at me for a couple of years to go camping and, having run out of excuses, I
Continue Reading11Apr2024
Walking the Wicklow Way Trail in Ireland
The Wicklow Way is a long-distance hiking trail that starts in Dublin, Ireland and heads south through the scenic Wicklow Mountains for 82 miles, ending in Clonegal. Along the way it passes through sleepy Irish towns, important historic sites, and rugged wilderness. In 2008, I had the chance to walk a good portion of it to celebrate my 28th birthday. The Plan for Walking Wicklow Way Trail During
Continue Reading09Apr2024
Camping in Kaghan, Pakistan: Camping Tips
Though I am not much of a camper, I have learned some tips from the few trips I have been on. To explain these, I would like to recount my experiences in the “wild” with you. It had been a long year studying and we all needed a bit of a break from our studies, and what better place to do this than going to the northern regions of Pakistan. Furthermore, we decided to go on our first-ever campi
Continue Reading07Apr2024
Camping in Romania: Don’t Forget the Camping Essentials
I live in Romania, to be more specific Transylvania. It's a beautiful location full of mountains, plains and hills. I don't want to bore you with details about the beautiful green grass in the summer or the pure white snow in the winter. It's a great place, and I live right in the middle of it. A few days ago I and some friends decided to pick up our bikes and go camping in a forest nearby. I took
Continue Reading05Apr2024
Love-Hate Relationship With Camping
I have a love-hate relationship with camping. There are so many aspects which I dislike: the constant closeness that you have with members of your family, the mile long walks to the toilet in the middle of the night, the fact that you wake up cold no matter how snug you were when you drifted off to sleep, the unwavering ability to hear everything that is going on in the campsite at every time of t
Continue Reading04Apr2024
The Day the World Ended
In the summer of 1972, my two sisters and I were three wily adolescent girls, all on the brink of trouble. So our father, Eugene Porter, dragged us camping to the most remote spot that he could find – the Gila Wilderness in western New Mexico. Daddy struck camp there and we found ourselves stuck out there for two weeks in the middle of a glorious nowhere with our tent-loving, bean-cooking, story
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