Wes had the tent poles laid out on the ground in the order he thought they went, and I had the instructions in my hand, and we did not agree. Tonya had loaned us her tent with the words "it's easy," which is what people say about things they put up once in 2017.
We got it up in about twenty minutes. Nobody cried. That was the start of our first night camping at Jones Lake State Park, about an hour from home outside Elizabethtown, on the last Friday in April.
Our first two trips this year came in at $212 and $236. Both times the biggest single line on the receipt was a bed: Darren's couch was free, but the Myrtle Beach motel was $178 with tax for two nights. I wanted to see what happened if the bed cost almost nothing. A tent site at a North Carolina state park runs a fraction of a motel room, and Jones Lake is close enough that if it all went wrong we could be home in our own bed by eleven.
The lake itself is one of the Carolina bays, an oval of dark tea-colored water with white sand along the edge and cypress trees standing out in it. The campground is shaded and quiet, and our site had a picnic table, a fire ring and a flat tent pad. The bathhouse had hot showers, which I had checked twice before booking.
What we brought and what we didn't buy
The whole point was to spend nothing on gear. If we had gone out and bought a tent, sleeping bags and a camp stove, the first trip would have cost more than a motel and we would have been "saving money" for the next three years.
So we packed what we had. Tonya's tent, plus the queen air mattress we keep for company. Our own pillows and two old comforters instead of sleeping bags. The cooler, the cast iron skillet and the small grill grate Wes uses for fish. Two camp chairs from the shed, a headlamp each, and bug spray, which we needed by dusk.
Supper was hot dogs and foil packets of potatoes and onions on the fire, and Saturday breakfast was bacon and eggs in the skillet. Wes fished from the shore for an hour and caught a couple of small bream he let go. I walked the trail around part of the lake and counted turtles on a log.
So does it really save money for two people over forty?
Here is the honest answer. The money part, yes. The sleep part, mostly. I am forty and Wes is forty-four, and the air mattress lost about a third of its air by three in the morning. Wes woke up, pumped it back up with the little battery pump, and went back to sleep. I lay there listening to an owl and something walking in the leaves that Wes later told me was "probably a raccoon," in a voice that did not sound sure.
By seven, with coffee in my hand and mist on the lake, I had forgiven the mattress. There is something about waking up outside that a motel can't give you. But I will say this plainly for anybody our age: one night is the right amount for a first try. Two nights on a leaky mattress would have been a different post.
The numbers
Elizabethtown is about 57 miles each way from our house. We drove about 115 miles total, and at 28 miles to the gallon and $2.89 a gallon that is about $12 in gas.
- Tent site, one night: $28
- Gas, about 4.1 gallons at $2.89: $12
- Groceries for the cooler: $29
- Ice and a bundle of firewood: $12
- Total: $81
That is the cheapest trip we have taken since we started this, by more than half. Compared with one night in the Myrtle Beach motel, we saved about $50 on the bed alone.
Would I do it again? Yes, with a better mattress pad, and probably in the fall when the bugs ease up. We gave Tonya back her tent with a bag of dog food for June and a thank-you, and Wes says next time he is putting it up without the instructions. I have already hidden them in the trip envelope just in case.
