Camping: The Unsung Vacation Choice

My campsite at Fish Creek Ponds.

I’m spending a couple of days in the Adirondacks among hundreds of families who are vacationing in a way that seldom gets any attention in the media.

We’re camping at Fish Creek Ponds, where the state of New York maintains hundreds of campsites, most of them directly on one of several beautiful ponds and creeks. The price of a cabin or hotel room with an equivalent view would be astronomical, yet these sites cost only $22 a night.

The campground has a beach with lifeguards, a basketball court,  a volleyball net, flush toilets and showers. Every day, vendors come through selling firewood and ice cream. A nearby marina delivers canoes, kayaks and rowboats directly to campsites. Last night there was a free folk concert.

The campers come from all over the Northeast with equipment that runs the gamut from the most luxurious Winnebagos to tiny backpacking tents.

I grew up camping, but this was my first trip in a couple of years. It reminds me that many American families vacation this way, without staying in hotels, flying in commercial airliners or even eating in restaurants.

Yet travel magazines and the travel sections of newspapers publish very little about this mode of vacationing. I plead guilty, as well. I haven’t written much about camping. But I’m going to try to do better in the future.