Camping is fun. Getting the camper ready to go camping is work. This is the price you pay for setting out to ride through the mountains to the perfect destination. Before you can relax and enjoy, you must grunt and strain.

I see campers and RVs everywhere sitting unused. They sit in backyards under pecan trees. Shiny coats turned black with sap and mold. They sit in holding yards behind a chain link fence at the You-Store-It-Place for all the extra belongings we don’t have room for at home. Some are kept inside huge barns collecting dust.

On my drive to Columbus from the house, I pass one of these holding yards. I have watched with interest some of the things people leave there. A dump truck. A few boats. Even a tractor. But by far the most abandoned vehicle is the camper. I can tell that a few of them have not been moved in years.

They look like sad puppies behind the cage at the local shelter. They are begging to be set free. They yearn for the open road but the wheels ain’t moving.

These campers sit unused because someone had the idea that camping would be a great way to relax and get away from it all. Just hook up the trailer and go. Get in the RV and drive anywhere you choose. Park it and the fun begins.

But it ain’t that easy.

Campers come with a lot of nice amenities these days, but they still require you to supply the basics. You must stock the camper with lots of similar things you already own for your house, which means that you will now own duplicate versions of things like plates, cups, pots, pans, towels, sheets, flashlights, serving trays, Ziploc bags, fans, a step stool, blankets, silverware, a coffee pot, a trash can, and extra plastic trash bags.

That’s just the things you need inside the camper. Campers have outside accessible storage compartments where you can stash stuff under the camper floor. Here is where you’ll put all the other stuff you’ll need with you on the road.

Pay close attention to the list. You’ll want camping chairs, a grill, a toolbox, an outdoor rug, wheel chocks, wooden blocks to set under the stabilizer jacks. Speaking of stabilizing, you’ll need a level, an impact wrench, and leveling blocks for the tires. Don’t forget firewood, mosquito repellent candles, a bigger flashlight, charcoal, lighter fluid, duct tape, a lighter, rope, string, glue, and clothes pins.

You may just want to dump your junk drawer at home into a plastic tote and keep it in one of the compartments. That way you’ll have everything you’ll need.

By now you’re close, but you’re not quite ready to get on the road yet.

You’ll need food.

This takes planning. You’ll have to create a menu and a list of all the items you’ll need for each meal. Your storage pantry is small, which means you can’t just throw food in there. Likewise, the fridge is small and the freezer even smaller. You must be a creative food packer in order to make it all fit.

Days before the camping trip, you go to the store. You think about buying ketchup. It’s on the list, but you think to yourself, “I’ve already got ketchup at home.” But that won’t do. You have the monster ketchup bottle from Sams that fits into the door shelf of your monster fridge. What you need is the travel size ketchup.

Camping requires prudent thinking and creative solutions.

This means you have to think ahead. There’s no such thing as last-minute camping. You don’t just get up from the supper table on Friday night and say, “Hey! Let’s hook up and go.”

The fridge and freezer need to be turned on the day before. One, to check and make sure they are working, and two, to cool them down for all the miniature bottles of ketchup and mayo and mustard you bought.

The camper does not have a washer and dryer, so all the towels and sheets from the last camping trip are still in the house in the laundry room. They might be washed. They might not be. Either way, you’ve got to get those together and back in the camper.

The pantry. You never leave food in the camper pantry. Not unless you want the 5th Ant Battalion to take over your camper. This means that you fill boxes in your kitchen with things like sugar, salt, pepper, crackers, cereal, oatmeal, syrup, and beverages. Each box will weigh about like a 50lb bag of fertilizer, and you will tote it out the door, down the steps and across the lawn to where the camper is parked. It takes approximately 14 trips to stock a camper pantry for a week-long trip.

So, this past Thursday morning, these are all the things that Marion and I were doing in prep for our trip to the mountains. We don’t mind the work. We understand what it takes.

We were planning be gone around 11am. We’re loading boxes, filling the fridge, checking tire pressure, and getting the bikes locked onto the carrier. Then we had to swap out the truck hitch. The normal trailer hitch is not made for a 30ft camper. The camper hitch is built like an Abrams M1 tank and weighs about the same.

While checking tire pressure Marion noticed that a section of the poly-underbelly was loose and dangling. It was hanging low enough the wind might catch it and rip it out from under the camper going down the road. We got two roller-creepers out of the garage and a roll of Gorilla tape. We also took some small wooden blocks, screws, and the impact driver with us.

We’re laying on our backs and reaching over our heads. Marion’s “crawler” is actually a 2×4 dolly, and it’s poking her in the back. We manage to put a few blocks in at the seam where the underbelly had come apart. We drove the screws tight to help take out the slack.

Then we went to seal up the seam with the tape. I was the tape dispenser. Marion was the tape placer.

“Give me a long piece,” she would ask.

I would pull and rip.

“I need a short piece.”

Again, I pull and rip.

Gorilla tape is very sticky. My rips were not perfect every time. Sometimes the tape got twisted and stuck to itself. Sometimes it would rip longways and not across the roll, and I’d end up with a narrow piece.

“What kind of a redneck are you that can’t tear duct tape?” Marion is always so supportive.

Nearly every piece got so stuck to my fingers that as I handed a piece to her, she had to rip it off my hand, which was beginning to turn my skin raw.

By the time we finished, I had Gorilla tape strands stuck to my pants, my shirt, my elbow, and Marion had one stuck to the bottom of her shoe.

Finally, we pulled out around 1:30pm. But what a beautiful place once we got here.

Camping is so relaxing.