'Where To Next?' (Making Those Plans For Next Year)

Thanks to our Girl Camping friend, Miss Patty, we've learned something important about those camping trips we dream of taking:

If you don't put them on your calendar as red-letter dates, those trips are likely to pass you by. After all, you haven't committed the dates to camping, so...

[any of this sound familiar?]

* You fall prey to life's everyday gotta-do's, which jump up to assert themselves as being 'more important, really' than the fun and memories you would make by camping.

* It becomes easier to procrastinate on doing the little fixes/projects/fix-ups to your camping outfit, and by the time an event or trip comes around, you're not ready.

* The others in your household are free to claim the 'blank' weekends and holidays for their own purposes (many of which inevitably will involve you and your services).

* There are no trailer sites or sign-ups left by the time you make a last-minute decision to attend, leaving you SOL.

* You don't budget for the expenses, and end up having to stay home and pay bills instead of joining in.

Here's Miss Patty from last April, on a calendar-planned camping trip where...we didn't get to go camping, exactly, because the weather didn't cooperate. Stay home? Not the Miss Patty way. So we both drove to the agreed-upon meet-up town, hotel-camped instead, and made it its own kind of Girl Camping adventure.

Just one reason why she rocks it on a regular basis.

We have several camping dates already saved and circled for 2012. How about you?