I love camping. I grew up doing it and I can't imagine a summer without camping. S didn't grow up with and doesn't always see the beauty and splendor of camping but will usually humor me enough to go camping two weekends of the year. It's a good, fun, and cheap way to get away from the city and the busy-ness.

In the past we have never planned for our camping trips. They have mostly been spur of the moment activities or if they were scheduled in advance we never saved up for the trip. We always just went and took the money out of our normal budget or put the rest on the charge card.

Since the Gimli trip I've learned that part of what made that holiday so good and relaxing was knowing that it was money that WE HAD and that WE HAD SAVED for and that it wasn't going onto a credit card with no plan on how to pay it off. Spending your own money is way better then spending someone else's money who is going to charge you 23% interest every month.

We have made tentative plans plans to go camping with friends of ours in May. Even if they don't go, we'll still go on our own. I did some preliminary calculating and a pretty liberal budget for 2 nights camping is $300. There are lots of variables that I just don't know yet like:

• It would be less if we go with friends--splitting the camp spot and food
• Not sure where we would go so gas could be more or less
• Is firewood free where we go? Something else to factor in
• Depending what kind of camp spot we get the prices are different (electrical, non-electrical, yurt, rustic cabin)

I'm going to make a side bar to track our saving for our Camping Trip. I find the side bar really motivates me.