My last camping trip was as a Boy Scout to Camp La-No-Che here in sunny Florida in the summer after the 6th grade. It was closer to a reenactment of "Lord of the Flies". Our scoutmaster was pretty much absent, off smoking and drinking coffee with the others. We were pretty much left to our own devices, which meant swearing and snapping people on the ass with a wet towel. Tents without floors, a rusty steel cot to put your sleeping bag on and a mosquito bar to hang around the cot. It only made the mosquitos have to come in from the bottom rather than a direct attack. I'd spend the night trying not to scratch my many bites thinking if I started, I wouldn't be able to stop and only make them worse. Food was pretty bad, and by the end of the week I had a good crop of poison oak scabs on my face. Now THAT'S camping.
If I were to do it now, I'd take the advice of one of the Elders at my church back then. He was tellin' me about week-long fishing and camping trips with his pals. I asked if the mosquitos weren't kind of rough, to which he replied, "I get so drunk they just fall off." Made me wish I'd have had a flask at Camp La-No-Che.
