I've always loved camping. I've done it to varying degrees my entire life. Some of my happiest memories are of camping with my grandparents when I had to be around five. I remember my grandpa walking around Dillon State Park greeting all the other campers. He would wander up and talk for what seemed like hours. Of course I was five so it was probably more like 10 minutes. The grandparents had a regulation camper which was a novelty to me because we had a Sears pop-up camper (or one similar). My favorite memory in that camper was the time the front awning collapsed during a heavy rain storm and Mom, my two younger brothers and I were trapped inside until Dad came back from work to free us. I'm pretty sure Mom could have broke us out if necessary but it rained all day anyway so why get out. I also attribute that day to my love of camping in inclement weather. Even now I love camping in the rain and cold. Even snow.
Later on in life I got to camp in the Alaskan wilderness as part of my job. We would get flown by helicopter into the bombing ranges at the base of the Brooks Range and camp for two weeks. We would ride around on our four wheelers looking for MK 84 bombs to blow up. Our branch chief was a hunter and trapper who would stay behind and shoot ptarmigan (a game bird) with his BB gun, clean and cook them or alternatively we would catch and cook trout. That was probably the highlight of my camping life. There's a reason this blog is called "Life's Been Good To Me".
More recently I did a lot of tent camping with my wife at the time. As that went on though I found that sleeping on the ground in the mountains of Colorado sucked as I got older. I started watching Expedition Overland on YouTube. I had really been attracted to overlanding long before that was the name for it, I still just call it camping to be honest. But these guys had a 2016 Toyota Tacoma that I fell in love with. Pretty soon I got to fantasizing about having a rig like that. Being older and wiser than I was in my 20's and 30's I realized that to sink all of that money into something isn't realistic for a guy in his 50's who now has to plan for retirement. Unfortunately I ended up getting divorced. We had to sell the house and that's when I ended up getting, what I refer to as the midlife crises mobile. I've never had a moment's regret about spending the money on it. I feel like I've already gotten my money's worth. Last year was filled with so many great trips I have a hard time remembering them all.
I'm looking forward to getting back out there. Here are links to some of my favorite sites:
Trail Recon - Brad is a retired Navy Master Chief and now full time YouTuber. He started out more rock crawling oriented but has been transitioning over to general four wheeling and camping adventures. His channel is very professionally filmed and edited.
venture4wd - Chris has been living full time in his Jeep for over three years now. He's a very down to earth, no nonsense guy. He doesn't have a lot of fancy equipment and doesn't focus on the off-roading as much as the adventure. He's traveled all over the US and Canada and features beautiful photography and videography. He also features very little music which I love.
4WD Action - a YouTube channel by what I'm assuming is Australia's largest four wheel drive magazine. Beautiful Australian scenery, camp "cooking" segments and a lot of what we here in the States would call good old boy humor. Just a lot of Toyota vs. Nissan shit talking and friendly teasing.
That's pretty much it for now. I look forward to posting some camping stories in the near future, or at this rate probably the middle distant future.
