"Nice rackage" she said. "I’m not that kind of guy" I answered.

We all got to sleep sometime. 

And when we travel far away from the familiarity of our own bed, pillow and blankie, we have some choices.

For many people, the progression of deciding where we put our head at night–referring to our sleeping arrangements–seems to often have some correlation to our age and our income bracket.

As I read a small sampling of the gabillions of travel blogs it surely seems the housing choice of many is the hostel.

I missed the opportunity for world travel while in my relative youth–which translates into I never did the Eurail Europass trek through Europe, hopping from hostel to hostel.

I know, I know…how can I consider myself a global humor adventure writer if I never experienced world travel by sleeping with a bunch of sometimes smelly, drunk, snoring, bedmates? (Damn, I think I just described who sleeps with my wife on a regular basis.)

Since I embarked on my nascent writing career I have been educated to an evolving world of travel styles such as flashpacking (think backpacking with disposable income,  lots of toys and an occasional night at the Hilton, rather than the hostel).

For many in my generation, we spent summers on road trips in the Family Truckster, on family adventures called car camping.

While I don’t think car camping necessarily went the way of the car cassette player, what many of the hostel-age road-tripper does nowadays is a far cry from what we called car camping back in the day. We had the advantage of many specialized survival tricks learned in the Boy Scouts. (Motto “take everything you own with you because you MIGHT need it.”)

So, in the name of passing on the great knowledge and wisdom of your elders and saving you the trouble of having to Google the information or trying to find the nearest Travel Museum, here are some of the salient differences between the classic car camping compared to what might now be just called a road trip.

You: Clothing consists of what you have on when you leave the house.

Us: We pack clothing for all four seasons: everything from full body suits of down to swim suits, and of sufficient quantity to last for an extending campaign of a small army.

You: A small ice chest with a couple of Red Bulls, a few beers, and some beef jerky.

Us: Enough food and kitchen supplies to cook for that extended campaign of a small army. This includes at least two large ice chests, a food locker, two stoves, a cooking table and a separate eating table.

You: A synthetic-fill sleeping bag (if you remembered to grab it) and maybe a tarp or tent so small you carry it in your pocket.

Us: A canvas tent big enough to sleep the aforementioned extending campaign of a small army; a heavy Dacron sleeping bag; a large blow-up mattress; extra blankets; and spare tents, sleeping bags, tarps, ropes, and tent stakes…just in case (of what, we were never really sure of).

You: Place your sleeping bag down on the ground for the night carefully with the goal of leaving no trace.

Us: Spend most of afternoon digging a trench completely around our tent, at the base to channel water away from tent and under the sleeping bag of that couple that set up their tent within moaning distance.

You: Enjoy the evening wearing a beanie-cap with a headlamp, and sharing stories and aromatic herbal products.

Us: Creating a campfire that can be seen from the international space station and attempting to recapture our youth by making Smores.

You: Sleep in until near noon, somehow able to sleep with the sun baking down on your tent.

Us: Up at 6 a.m. (just like at home) but so stiff from sleeping on the ground, can barely make it over to the stove to start coffee.

So, we are on our way to our annual Eagle Lake camp-out of aging hippies with grown kids representing all manner of camping styles described above. 

One thing that may be the closest to bridge the generation gap is the rackage we seem to have adopted that is worthy of a Yakima or Thule ad.

We all like our toys.

I will be back in a few days with hopefully some good pictures–if we can see through this year’s never ending supply of forest fire-created smoke.

I got the Blue Bottle all packed and my daughter is bringing the Bloody Mary supplies (it’s nice when our kids start supplying us with food and drink). 

Cheers.