TRAVEL
CATCH THE CAMPING CRAZE From tents to permanent sites, outdoor enthusiasts flock to campgrounds for family fun. BY ANASTASIA PENCHI | CONTRIBUTED PHOTOS
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ori Hesse of La Crosse grew up tent camping with her family as a young girl, and she will never forget the time her family found snakes under their tent as they packed up. That’s all it took for her parents to upgrade to a pop-up camper. Later came a hard-sided camping trailer, and then an even larger one. “I think that is how a lot of people progress through it,” Hesse says. Hesse didn’t let the coronavirus pandemic stop her from camping last year because she feels safe camping, but it has definitely affected her camper acquisition process. COVID-19 CAMPER CRAZE Hesse is in the midst of a camper upgrade. She, too, started with a tent as an adult, but switched to a pop-up camper and then a hybrid model (a hard-sided trailer with tents that pull out). In April of this year, she was trying to upgrade to an even larger camper with her husband, Cameron. “It’s so hard to find campers right now,” says Hesse, who got interested in one Facebook-advertised camper only to find it sold three hours later. “They go so quick.” Covid-19 has resulted in mixed outcomes to the camping industry. Dealer and private camper sales exploded last year, but as a result there is limited inventory this year. One area dealer says he normally has 80
campers for sale, but this year has only eight. That’s likely due to the whopping 48 million households who went camping in 2020, according to the 2021 North American Camping report by Kampgrounds of America (KOA), the world’s largest system of open-to-the-public campgrounds. There are more than 525 KOA campgrounds located throughout nearly every U.S. state. The number of new camper households last year totaled about 6 million. More than half of those new campers (55 percent) reported that their plans to try camping were directly related to the pandemic as they deemed it an affordable, safe way to pursue leisure vacation travel. TOP CAMPING HACKS • Hang freshly washed dishes in a mesh laundry bag to dry. • Fill a just-emptied 2.5-gallon laundry jug with water and leave outside on a picnic table for hand washing. • Cut up foam noodles to mark awning braces and tent stakes. • Use solar lights to mark walking paths at night. • Increase storage by using a hanging shoe organizer. • Use plastic shower caps to cover plates of food left on the picnic table to keep bugs out. www.crwmagazine.com JUNE/JULY 2021 43
