When my father was little, he was a boy scout. I tried Brownies for like half a year but it wasn't much fun, partially because Cambridge, Massachusetts is nothing like Knoxville, Tennessee. When my father was a boy scout, he literally had the Great Smokey Mountains in practically his backyard - he grew up hiking in there, he led a trip to Alaska, and after college he went backpacking in India with my mother and his friend Blaine (at different times). Anyways, when we were little (and still) we would spend a week every summer camping in Acadia National Park. This wasn't serious camping - this was camping where you got to bring your car - but still, it was really cool. And once or twice, we went backpacking in New Hampshire at this place called Unknown Pond.
When I was thirteen, my mother took me with her to South Africa for about a week and a half, and on the way back we stopped through Kenya, where my grandparents were. The four of us had some pretty great adventures in the Rift Valley with Maasai families my mother had known since childhood, and then, at the end of the trip, my grandparents surprised us and told us we were going to Little Governers Camp in the Maasai Mara for two or three days. That trip in the Mara was incredible - my family drove through and camped there again when I was fifteen on our way to Rwanda - and we stayed in huge platform tents beside a river where you could see the animals come to drink. Seriously, we would be having lunch and there would be a lion across the river from us, just drinking some water. It was incredible.
My family has some lightweight, nylon, backpacking tents that we take with us to Acadia and to New Hampshire and that we slept in when we all went to Africa, but sometimes this is what I think of when I think of tents....
(Okay, that one doesn't really count given that it's inside...)
(so is this one)
(and this one is more of a covered porch, but still)
