For Better or For Worse by Lynn Johnston for August 07, 2023

Reason has left the building

Usually children’s lives in such matter are dictated by whether the parents liked it, with the children’s reactions being secondary. It certainly works that way in Calvin and Hobbes.

The only time I went camping as a kid was at a Scout camp. I loved it. I also camped out as an adult, the last time in my 40s. I’d camp in a KOA cabin. No more sleeping on the ground.

Lizzy figured it out early. I had to camp 5 or 6 times before I admitted I hated it. I switched to camping at Holiday Inn, Ramada, Best Western, etc.

I got camping insurance….but if someone steals my tent in the middle of the night….

I’m no longer covered.

You can tell this is a girl’s tent. They pulled back the door drapes with curtain tiebacks.

I know you may not think camping is fun.

But it’s in tents.

I no longer like tents so I prefer a cabin on a campground. Last time a tent, I almost fell in husband and dog when I got up to go to washroom. I can’t wait to sell the tent. Cabin more comfy.

No Girl Scouts in Canada ?

I never understood what lured some people to camping.

I’ve been to camp only once in my life…and I hated it…I still do!

What ever happened to Johnnyrico?

Hasta hasta hasta.

As a young adult I backpacked and camped in the Rockies. 2 weeks 120 miles, lots of scenery and adventure. Now at 65 my wife’s idea of camping is a hotel that doesn’t have a mint on the pillow. When I retire in 5 years, I plan to hike the cowboy trail in Nebraska. It’s along an abandoned railroad ROW so it is fairly flat. There are towns about every 10 miles so you can get more water and supplies if needed. I’ll make a stop at my daughter’s ranch along the way.

I hope Liz gives it another go. Some of us restrict ourselves all our lives because of what we hated as a kid.

Camping with family and camping with friends are two different things. I assume Mike wasn’t a good camping companion as he liked to tease her all the time.

There is a truely expansive difference between camping with your family and camping with your friends. Sad, but true.

Typical teenage girl logic in play here.

Sounds funny, but it could also be Elizabeth’s willingness to try again.

Lots of stories but I went snow camping once. Slept on snow and could hear water flowing into the river all night. Peaceful beyond description.

Good reason, Elizabeth.

Used to love to camp. Building the campfire was the best. But, I am a guy ;-)

Hangovers, filleting fish, cheeseburgers, black flies, icy cold spring lakes, mosquitoes and biting flies

I’ve been once. I was nine. It was a Cub Scout camping trip that started on the last day of school. I had already decided I’d had enough of Cub Scouts but my parents insisted I keep this commitment. I expected to hate it but I remember having a lot more fun than expected. I guess it’s for the best that I ended my brief scouting career on a high note.

My dad went too. I don’t think it was really his scene but he was never one to let on that he wasn’t having a good time when I clearly was. All the other dads on the trip were pretty hard core scouting chaperones and the stories he would tell many years later had me rolling my eyes at them.

Anyway, haven’t been camping since. I think of it as one of those things that you should probably do once, and the younger the better. I can’t imagine even attempting it today.

Camping out in a tent, in the back yard, when I was a child/ teenager? Yep, that was fun. Camping in the wilderness, having to walk on a dirt path to use a bug-infested outhouse, using communal showers? Nope.

The Patterson kids are cutting back in the interest of the “greater good”. No need to worry about April outgrowing clothes; she stopped wearing them. No need to worry about sheltering Elizabeth; she moved out of the house to live in a tent. Now if they can only pull Michael out of college.

The Patterson kids are starting to understand the “big picture”. They are sacrificing to be able to afford what is important: new furniture. Elly’s greater good!

The only reason I was in Scouting as a lad was for the camping!

My mother hated camping. My dad was a Scout adult leader, first in Cub Scouts, then Boy Scouts and finally at the district level. So, living by the “happy wife” axiom, we never went camping as a family. I did go camping with the Girl Scouts once, and with my aunt and uncle when I spent a summer in Oregon with my grandparents. Other than that, most of my early “camping” was in dad’s put tent in the back yard, usually with a BFF sharing the tent.

My husband was an avid camper as a kid and he infected me with the bug early on. We had a tent similar to the one you see in the comic that we used for a lot of years. We then upgraded to a tent-trailer. It had hookups for water and power, but no “facilities” so we were still trekking to the community bathrooms. That got traded in for a small motorhome when we couldn’t get down on our knees to put down the corner stabilizers anymore. And that motorhome got traded in for a bigger one when we decided to full-time. We’ve had a lot of adventures, both good and bad in all 4 of them.

Never, ever, ever again will I sleep in a tent.

I am actually excited about the idea of a story of Elizabeth camping with the Enjo parents and Dawn. The Enjos are the only remaining models of good parenting in the comic strip and it would be intriguing to see how they would handle Elizabeth at this stage when she had started turning into a younger, female version of Michael. We would get to explore the Enjo parents’ personalities in a previously-unseen situation and see how Elizabeth would handle it being around real parents. We would get to see Elizabeth out camping with someone other than her parents, who would actually know how to do it. This will make for a great story and I look forward to seeing how Lynn Johnston will put it together.

“There was nowhere for me plug in my curlers!”