The original post by Natalie the Singingfool can be found at How to Plan a Camping Trip, Natalie-Style
- Schedule your trip to immediately follow a major holiday. This way, you ensure the maximum amount of stress while you’re preparing for both the holiday and the trip.
- Make sure you over-commit during the week prior to your trip. Volunteer to lead neighborhood activities such as, oh, Easter egg dying, purchasing food for said activities and commit to several hours right before you’re supposed to leave.
- Forget items on your shopping list so you have to go to the store/library multiple times throughout the week, including on rushed lunch breaks.
- Also make sure you no longer fit in any of your camping clothes. This ensures that you will have to go out shopping for jeans and flannels at the Goodwill during the eleventh hour. An added bonus, you also must wash these clothes, because Goodwill=yuck.
- Start an impossibly demanding work project in the weeks prior, scheduled to finish on your last day of work. This way, you will be pushed to your maximum emotional capacity during an already stressful time.
- Leave all of your packing – including food – until after you get off work at 5:30 PM, especially if you’re leaving at 6:00 AM the following morning.
- By following the above outline, you will successfully have scheduled all the time you usually devote to exercise, cooking healthy meals, and writing three key factors in maintaining physical, emotional and mental health. If you aren’t exercising and eating, you will especially amplify the hurry, back pain and overall irritation. You will also possibly get sick just in time to do your best outdoor relaxing.
- Chop vegetables for snacks at 11:00 PM the night before.
- Voilà! You overslept from exertion, and are now running hours behind. Fall asleep in the car while your husband drives.
Not that I did any of these this week.
