Glamping: Time in the great outdoors for folks, like me, who can't quite pull off camping

Out of the darkness, from somewhere not too far above our heads, Valerie and I heard a loud screech.

“What was that?” I blurted. I may have used a few more words than that.

The last time I posed that question to Valerie, it was a fisher cat making its blood-curdling wail from the woods near our home. This time around, it was at a campground last week.

Valerie and I heard the screech as we unloaded our luggage from our car and carried them into our tent. I activated the flashlight on my phone and directed the beam toward the treetops that surrounded us. Neither Val nor I knew what creature had screeched. All I knew was that I was going to re-pack the car and hightail it outta there if the thing turned out to be some kind of large bat.

We heard a loud flutter in the trees. Then we saw the shadowy outline of an owl as it dodged the bright light I had thrown its way.

“Huh,” I said, as the bird disappeared from view. “Okay, then.”

I had never heard an owl screech before. Truth is, I thought they only hoo-hooed.

This was the first time I had been camping in more than 20 years. The last time had not gone so well, as the night was sweltering, and Val and I did not have a fan to offer both relief and the white noise I need to sleep. At one point in the middle of the night, I heard heavy footsteps approach our tent and stop precisely on the other side of the canvas, a mere foot or two from our heads. I never heard the footsteps again, leaving me to believe the beast had been outside our tent the whole night, ready to devour us if we dared make a pitch-dark run to the outhouse. Sounded like a bear to me. Valerie said it was likely a rabbit or a chipmunk.

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There are other disastrous stories I can tell about that long-ago outing, but anyway. That was the summer of 1999. You know, the summer when “The Blair Witch Project” came out. Val and I saw that indie horror flick the night after we returned from camping. The film struck a nerve.

And here we are, in 2022. And it was not necessarily camping that Val and I went to last week. It was “glamping.”

Surely, you know what “glamping” is. I am confident you’ve read both feature stories that I have written about the phenomenon for the Coast Star in recent years. “Glamping” is “glamorous camping.” Your tent is a solid canvas structure, large enough to include a table and chairs, a counter topped with plates, mugs and silverware, a small fridge, and a table to gather ’round for breakfast or supper.

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Some of these “glamping” tents are even big enough to include a bathroom, complete with a shower. Val and I did not get one of those and had to settle for the restrooms – which were clean and well lit, by the way – a few steps down the dirt path.

“Glampsites,” as I assume they are called, are popping up everywhere. Valerie and I stayed at Huttopia, up in the White Mountains in Albany, New Hampshire. We had a carefree couple of days, reading on our tent’s front deck in the morning, swimming in Iona Lake in the afternoon, venturing into North Conway for dinner, and sitting around a campfire at night. On our second night there, one of those owls perched near us and stayed a short while as we sat by the fire.

Val and I felt like the old folks on the block, as we were mostly surrounded by young families and couples who took full advantage of the physical and social opportunities at the site: swimming and biking and jogging and playing basketball and cornhole. On our first night there, the campground showed “Inside Out,” the wonderful Pixar family film from a few years ago, and Val and I joined the crowd to watch it for a bit. A nearby food truck sold crepes – and rather than choose between the sweet and savory options, I got one from each.

Just a nice, laid-back couple of days, a relaxing getaway during a week off from work. It was nice being there in Albany, knowing we actually had a Huttopia right at home in Sanford, if ever we wanted to go there overnight sometime. Admittedly, the ease and convenience of “glamping” is my speed, as I am more accustomed to urban life and have little patience for pitching tents.

I get that from my father. He and Mom took my sister Kelly and me camping when I was about 5 years old. Halfway through the weekend, we got slammed with a torrential downpour that was forecast to continue through the rest of our stay. We decided to pull up our stakes and head home. Or, rather, Mom decided that Dad should pull up the stakes so that we could head home. She and Kelly and I stayed in the dry, warm car. I can still see Dad through the windshield, taking down our tent - he was soaked, kneeling in mud, struggling to yank stakes from the murk, and no doubt conjugating a variety of profanities under his breath.

Ah, but see, with “glamping,” the tent is right there, ready for you. At Huttopia, I slept well both nights, thanks to the cool air from the screen windows and from the fan we bought at the Walmart in North Conway. Yes, the tents have electrical outlets too. As I rested on my back, dozing off, I looked up and half-wished it would rain, if only so Val and I could enjoy the patter on the canvas. We would have done so without worry. The tent was not ours to take down the next morning.

Dad would have loved “glamping.”

Shawn P. Sullivan is an award-winning columnist and is a reporter for the York County Coast Star. He can be reached at ssullivan@seacoastonline.com.

This article originally appeared on Portsmouth Herald: Glamping retreat offers the comforts of home in the great outdoors