Comments on: High Camp

By: vidyut

vidyut — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 07:57:25 +0000

I live in India, where you can camp pretty much where you see unused space and no one would dream of not allowing dogs – there are dogs on the street anyway. I can only appreciate from my imagination how difficult it could be to be able to find a suitable camping site.

I hope you had a great time!

By: Timothy Burke

Timothy Burke — Sat, 24 Sep 2005 00:30:08 +0000

We’ve actually been down to Lewes and Cape Henlopen quite a few times, just in hotels rather than beach camping: we like it a lot. It’s why we thought of camping at Henlopen, I like the campground there a lot, having walked around it before.

But yeah, we realized about NASCAR once we checked into why it was so tough to book this weekend. So we bagged it. We’ll try again soon.

By: DarkoV

DarkoV — Fri, 23 Sep 2005 12:52:56 +0000

Well, this comment is probably too late in coming.
Henlopen is a fabulous camp site. Lewes, the nearest town, is quiet and interesting to poke around in. I highly recommend Striper Bites for a meal, beer, and a visit. We vacation in Lewes/cape Henlopen every other year. Jsut a great place to park your car fro a week and do a lot of biking and riding. Speaking abouot biking, bikes are free at the Nature Center in Cape Henlopen.
However,
THIS weekend is not a good idea, unless you want to get stuck in traffic. Even with Route 1 being a modern highway (which is unique for lower/slower Delaware), the NASCAR race weekend in Dover always promises you aches and misery.
Unless, you leave PA very very early and then leave Henlopen on Sunday very very late.
Bombay Hook, as you’dmentioned, has no camp sites, but the bird-watching there is great, second to Cape May in the Delaware BAy area.
Hope your 4 yr old can be persuaded to at least try one night at Henlopen. The night sky, the nature tours, the golf frisbee, the old watchtowers (that you can climb to the top and view the Atlantic and the Bay), the swimming in the Bay side and the Ocean side in the same day. And, of course, there’s the ice cream places in Lewes. She may yet be persuaded.

By: David Salmanson

David Salmanson — Fri, 23 Sep 2005 11:33:31 +0000

Get thee a copy of PJ Funnybunny Camps Out. Helped tremendously with “I wanna sleep in a tent again” Leonarda when we took her to NM this summer.

By: Timothy Burke

Timothy Burke — Thu, 22 Sep 2005 23:11:50 +0000

Bombay Hook is beautiful, I’ve hiked there. I don’t think it has any campgrounds, though.

Actually I managed to finally secure a spot at a state campground near Rehoboth only to have Emma (the 4-year old) suddenly hysterically veto the whole idea on the ground that “camping is scary”. I’ve found in the past that you don’t mess with a 4-year old’s Category 5-level “scary claims”, so no camping this weekend.

By: pmazur

pmazur — Thu, 22 Sep 2005 19:27:22 +0000

Tim,
I grew up in Wilmington, and I fondly remember visiting Bombay Hook Wildlife Refuge in Delaware with my father. I don’t know what the camping situation is there, and it’s not quite the shore, but it’s a quiet, beautiful place. It’s also closer to Philadelphia than Cape Henlopen.

By: Timothy Burke

Timothy Burke — Wed, 21 Sep 2005 20:55:36 +0000

Yeah, I know what you mean, at any rate. Anyhoo, mountain camping around here I have a better sense of; shore camping I think it’s a lot harder to just pitch a tent any old place, given how overdeveloped the Jersey and Delaware shores are.

By: emschwar

emschwar — Wed, 21 Sep 2005 20:12:18 +0000

I can’t help you out– I live in Colorado– but I can commiserate. Out here, reservations to camp in Rocky Mountain National Park sometimes need to be made months in advance (other times, you can practically walk in; sometimes it’s a crap shoot either way). There’s really not a good solution to the “Hey, where can I go camping this weekend?” question, much of the time. Even Boy Scout troops have to make sure to reserve an appropriate number of camp sites, depending on where they camp.

It’s too bad your family isn’t familiar with camping, as you can usually just find a spot out in the woods and set up a tent; this is obviously less ideal for your wife and child, though, as going in the woods is a bit more complicated for women.

Hrm… now that just reads oddly. Why don’t we have a good euphemism for eliminating bodily waste that isn’t location-specific? I wanted to write “going to the bathroom in the woods”, but that doesn’t make sense when you’re specifically talking about a place without bathrooms. Clearly, more research is needed here.