Now, I’m hearing it everywhere.
Glamping, for those of you unwashed, is glamorized camping. Sleeping outside, but with all the frills and comforts of home. Technically then, we are all outside in that regard. I’m glamping right now as I sit here in my PJs and write this in my bedroom office.
There’s no roughing it with glamping.
On Escape to the Chateau, the glamp-site includes a six-burner gas grill complete with all the accoutrements, which is basically a $20 word for accommodations which is a $10 word for “your stuff you pack in the back of your station wagon.”
According to Webster’s dictionary – and I can promise you the word glamping won’t show up in any hard copy anywhere – glamping is “a form of camping involving accommodation and facilities more luxurious than those associated with traditional camping.”
And apparently, a trailer or mobile home isn’t considered glamping.
Okay, as I am often wont to do, I’m going way over the top with this, as a “GLENT” and yes, I just invented the word, you saw it right here, would be considered a glamorous tent, which I would also argue, a camper or “GLAMPER” or “GLRAILER” or GLOBILE HOME – oh, I’m on fire here – are all glamorous camping devices. Keeping in that vein, you would need a GLAMPFIRE, GLANTERN, GLOOLER, and GLOVE – oops, I knew something would catch me – so I guess a stove is just a stove and not haberdashery. I’m destroying spell check here.
<deep breath>
I’m like Captain America, I could do this all day.
The whole point of camping, if I am reminiscing about my childhood horrors – I mean, experiences – in a tent is to rough it.
The campfire.
The tent.
No stove.
A bird-poop infested picnic table.
Sleeping on the ground – nobody ever thought to give the tent site a good sweeping to remove all those acorns before setting up the tent either.
No heat or A/C.
No fan even other than the one Mother Nature provides.
Anything that includes stuff that goes above and beyond traditional camping is basically staying at home, so what’s the point?
What got me started on this is there is a company wanting to build a glampground in Hall County who put in a zoning request change that’s got every government employee scratching their head and feeling a face-skid-on-asphalt headache coming on. There is currently no designation for glamping in Hall County.
A Google search found three glampgrounds in North Georgia. There’s one in Ellijay, another in Cumming and a third in Alpharetta, and all include the word “glamping” in their descriptions. I also noticed there are no glampgrounds in South Georgia, which includes everything below Macon. I would suppose our more rural brethren down I-75 don’t believe in glamorized camping, or can’t afford it since you’d need an industrial strength air-conditioner for that as I state for the record, if I am in any way sweating because of the heat, it’s not glamping.
As I alluded to earlier, my camping horrors along would make a great Stephen King novel.
Killer flies.
Crazy people camping next door.
The whole Deliverance movie concept, even before James Dickey penned the epic novel.
Torrential downpours, where a family of six including four kids under the age of seven, with three under the age of four, stuck inside a 6×8-foot tent for six days… it’s a wonder my dad didn’t go all Jack Torrence on us.
My attempts at taxidermy, which consisted of watching my dad hammer a fish head to a tree – hey, it was a really big fish… a Great Northern Pike even, and it had teeth like Jaws – and wondering why it smelled so bad and drew all the hornets, and flies around Lake Erie to our campsite. It took nearly a week to realize there was more to taxidermy than a hammer, nails and a fish head.
Vacations where we spent more time in the local hospital ER than at the campsite. A broken arm and broken nose suffered by my two sisters and my barely toddler brother fell into hot coals left by the previous campers and really blistered his hands… all this in five days.
You see where this is going?
For me, glamping is spending the night at the Marriott Marquis hotel in downtown Atlanta, somewhere above the 40th floor that afforded a panoramic view of the cityscape and I have to order pizza delivery or room service for dinner and catch a hangnail as I’m trying to unwrap the toilet paper.
Now, that’s glamping.
Dan Brown writes as D.P. Brown because of the other Dan Brown. Dan has published 13 novels since 2013. His books can be found on Amazon.com. For signed copies, questions and other comments, email dpbrownauthor@gmail.com Dan is also on Facebook and his books can be found under the D.P. Brown page.
