Glamping

Recently I burned about eight gallons of diesel brushing-out 3.5 miles of trails, a six acre wildlife opening and the ancestral campsite.  Campsite, you ask?  Yup; in the early years it was there we camped.  Eventually we purchased a park model trailer home, The Villa, adjacent to Potawotomi State Park and commuted back and forth from there to here and back.  Yup; we lived in a trailer park too.  And then eventually built a house (second home) and finally moved here permanently.

Over the years the Missus and I have been acquainted (and married) we've done a great deal of camping.  We've camped across the breadth of Canada, south to the Gulf of Mexico, all of the southwestern US, most of Wisconsin and we even took a Jeep trip off-road across the rocky mountains.

With two homes, a tree farm to maintain and the creep of maturity and eventually retirement the camping itch doesn't need much of a scratch.  Nevertheless, from time to time and on special occasions  we'll still pitch a tent, and cook over a fire or a camp stove.  We've saved all the camping gear and have our own private campsite down by Silver Creek.

I can bake a campfire dutch oven pizza, the best pudgie pie on the planet and have special kind of s'mores recipe in case you're interested. 

Anyway, the ancestral campsite has been cleaned-up.  A rough-cut with the Rhino bush hog...

Followed by a trim with a weed whacker...   

The original picnic table from more than three decades ago has been returned to its proper place.  I even added a Leopold bench for good measure.

We don't have electrical or water hook-ups.  But we have clear dark skies at night, no bothersome  drunken neighbors keeping you up until 2 AM and all the free firewood you need to roast a wienie and keep your tootsies toasty.  We even have a shitter.  You have to bring your own roll; butt the view is spectacular.  Pun intended.

Think of it as the first iteration of glamping.

Raising a toast to fun times out-of-doors and around the campfire.