Where does one of the youngest most traveled person in the world still travel to after they’ve been to nearly every country in the world?
Home, of course. Back to my backpacking roots by embracing camping in my home state, 2 hours north from my apartment. And while I don’t usually blog about the thrice-yearly camping trips I organize for my local monsooners who don’t join on my international trips, this one was special being 1) it was the most attended at over 20 people joining, and 2) it was combined with a unique experience at Bobo’s Farm where 15 more joined to dine inside a yurt that felt like we were back in Mongolia.
Our camping trips always starts at the campgrounds, where car by car and friend group by friend group arrive at their leisure and set up their tents before the sun sets.
And then, once oriented, we head out to one of my favorite parts to any camping trip: the first provisions shopping at the nearby market/supermarket/farm to gather what we think we’d be eating for the next 96 hours that included 2 dinners and 2 breakfasts. I think it’s the air of excitement of another adventure that gets me.
This is where different pockets of friends intermingle and politely joust and bargain over getting too much of this, share their knowledge of different spices other friend groups never heard of before (Slap Ya Mama spice, anyone?), offer recipes when they see an ingredient in an aisle, get excited over cocktail recipes, and debate how much water do we really need (hint: it’s 7.5 gallons per 20 people per day)?
There’s no better bonding exercise than bonding over basic needs on the pyramid of needs.
After half an hour at the grocery store, we pay for our provisions and head out into the sunset.
Once arriving, we unloaded our stuff on the picnic tables (always get a campsite with a table; you don’t appreciate surface areas of raised surfaces until you go camping) and began to organically divvy ourselves up by our preferred chore/expertise/contributions to the survival of the group. Some started the fire, others began meal prep. Some preferred to take over seasoning, others made cocktails, some figured out the grill, some went to retrieve charcoal, some squatted to grill on the campfire grate. Everyone played their roles, and all the burgers and hot dogs came together like a symphony with this crew.
I even went ahead and got creative from lettuce burgers to bagel burgers!
We settled around our campfire and tossed some fire coloring to the sound of “oooooh”‘s and “ahhhh”‘s to green and blue fire. Like straight out of Harry Potter.
Yuhan then came out with a birthday cake for Jenny that we snuck into the provisions shopping!
Afterwards we cozy’ed up under a night sky full of stars.
As the night progressed the group split up for sleepytime with more campfires by their tents to keep them warm, especially for the first timers.
The next morning we got up for a cool morning’s breakfast with coffee from the Mokapot (or instant coffee), and grilling some sugar-coated bacon, scrambled eggs, and toasted bagels.
After a lazy morning we got into our cars and drove out to a few farms looking for local organically grown provisions, ending up at our tried and true Soons Orchard for local produce. We picked up some popcorn, blueberry and apple pies, celery for Uriah, portobello mushrooms, cashews, chocolate covered treats, corn, sweet potatoes, and brussels sprouts for the evening.
We then drove to Angry Orchard to kick back some ciders and food truck lunch over live outdoor music.
Before sunset, we then headed to the local Shoprite to top off our provisions, running into the other half of our group who thought of doing the same thing, and we recongregated for one more night of dinner around the campfire.
We made corn on the cob, sweet potatoes, more burgers, sausages, strawberry gin mojitos, vegetable skewers, and grilled mushrooms.
