I have done quite a bit of camping over the decades. Heading out into the woods in hiking boots, on skis, or in a canoe is my favorite outdoor pursuit. I have, in addition, also done my share of car camping. It is the leisurely alternative to exploring the backcountry. You just pull up to a campsite in your car, set up your tent and some other gear within a few feet of your vehicle, and relax in the outdoors without breaking a sweat.

The biggest change I have witnessed in car camping over the years is that very few people now do what I described in the previous sentence. Almost no one arrives in a ”car” and sets up a ”tent.” Now almost everyone shows up in a motorhome or pulling a big trailer with a big truck. I will state this upfront: Bringing a hotel room with lights, air conditioning, television, and running water to a campground is NOT camping. If you are ”camping” this way, then so are the people down the road at the motel. The only difference, really, is that the motel room is not on wheels.

The fact that campgrounds have switched from being car camping destinations for tenters to being RV parks has made it less pleasurable for me. The main reason for that is the campgrounds are now much noisier. There is the truck traffic on the narrow campground roads as the big vehicles maneuver to a site, often with bright lights that make them appear to be an “official” emergency vehicle. Then there is all the noise that comes from the lengthy exercise of backing into a site, which often takes many attempts to get the vehicle, whether it is towing something or not, into the right spot. Once the motor home or trailer is parked and then made level, the loud generators come on to begin burning their fuel and providing bright lighting and heating and cooling, and to run whatever televisions or other electronic gadgets have been brought along to make camping as much like being at home as possible.

I had long given up hope of ever having a car camping experience like the good old days until camping at Acadia National Park in Maine in 2022. We camped for three nights in B Loop of Acadia’s Blackwoods Campground.. Generators are prohibited in the large loop of campsites and most of the sites are tent-only. All of our fellow campers were in tents and a lot of them drove up in, gasp, cars rather than Surburbans, Range Rovers, and monster trucks. We were amazed at how quiet it was in camp, whether it was morning, noon, or night. Interestingly, because of no generators and no motor homes, our fellow campers skewed much younger than, for example, in campgrounds we have frequented in New York’s Adirondack Mountains operated by the State Department of Environmental Conservation. The older folks we usually camp among do not sleep on the ground in tents anymore, and we saw very few of them in Acadia. We wondered if our young neighbors in the campground would be late-night revelers making lots of noise. They stayed up late, but there was no din to keep us awake. These young campers got going fairly early every morning to hike and explore Acadia, and we presumed a lot of them were getting dinner out.

We had such a nice time in Acadia that we went back the next year. We actually got the same campsite as previously, and our experience was the same; quiet and peaceful.

It occurred to me that New York DEC should consider grouping some sites in its campgrounds as tent-only. Why not have 10 or 20 adjoining campsites just for tenters who would like some peace and quiet and not have to listen to generators on either side of their site? If New York DEC gave the concept a try, I believe they would find it popular.