When hitting the music festival circuit, who’s your crew? Is it the RVers parked in the full hookup sites, with refrigerators and beds and toilets that flush. Or is it the primitive campers who sleep in tents and whose food and drinks are pulled from a cooler that someone damn-well better have remembered to restock with ice.
We usually camp with the glamper set, a relatively climate-controlled world where the elements are left outside – with the $100 zero gravity chairs and shoes all dry and tidy beneath the awning.
But we’ve been known to pitch our tent beside Spirit Lake, digging that primitive vibe with fellow tent campers.
Though the forces of gravity and the corrosion of age have us tending toward glamping’s softer touch, we’re comfortable with our flip flops in both camps.
Jason from “Wook Wranglers” called us “pro wooks” (wooks refers to hippies who sport dreads and a rough-hewn, road-worn patina. Or, as website Jamwich described them, festival folk who “owns nothing and borrows everything…aren’t afraid to criticize the festival for anything from their use of styrofoam plates to their policy on illegal vending, and haven’t bought their own pack of cigarettes since 2008”).
That’s kinda rough. Truth be told, in our experience, wooks we know tend to offer more than they ask for.
My niece called RoadtripMojo and other glampers “bougie wooks,” like some weekender bourgeois vagabonds.
That’s fair. We’re kinda fluid that way.
What’s in a Name?
Whether glampers or hippies, both sides are known to hurl and bear grief from the other camp. These cross-border skirmishes are all in good fun. We’re all about gettin’ down and gettin’ it on with nature.
Maybe the bigger question is, what is camping? Some Appalachian Trail hikers would say it’s nothing less than going all Louis, Clark and Sacajawea, packing a sack, exploring some remote terrain, then at the end of the day or a through-hike, washing up in the nearest stream.
Festival primitives might pull up in their Subaru, pop the trunk, and pitch their tent, but still doing their business in the bath house (as long as no one boges all the hot water).
Anyone got some Purell?
Meanwhile, glampers will pull up in the RV, maybe with granite countertops and ceramic tile floors, showering with the Oxygenics bodyspa and slipping between 600 thread-count, Egyptian cotton sheets atop the memory foam mattress, and powering up the tube.
“Hey, let’s stream ‘The Woman in the House Across the Street from the Girl in the Window’ on the dish.”
At what point does it go from camp to glamp? Who gets to decide?
Who really cares? There are greater and lesser folk in the world, including those cityfolk who might leer at campers of any sort as slovenly “dirt people,” as Sheldon in “Big Bang Theory” called geologists.
My father and I would hike for miles along the Florida Trail and at day’s end, unpack the REI backpack, pitch the tent and bed down in a pricy goose down sleeping bag.
Would we be goaded as glampers by the rucksack set, or called dirt people by uppity folk?
It’s all about perspective and tolerances. The same rain that floods tent sites is a comforting report hitting the RV rooftop. Those times when we’re caked with grime from a day spent hiking or canoeing or dancing in the festival fairgrounds and we badly need that hot shower – shampoo and conditioner, too.
“Anyone seen my loofa?”
There is no shame here. We’re unabashed glampers. Got a problem with that? Then no cocktails, charcuterie, after-dinner cigars, Spotify streaming to the RV stereo, or laser light display beside the gas fire pit for you.
Süleiman the Glamper
The concept of “glamping” for many might be as foreign as the name itself. Wikipedia claims the amalgam of “glamor” and “camping” first was uttered in 2005 in the U.K., of all places. By 2016, it found its way to the Oxford English Dictionary.
Here’s where we drop into the history lesson behind glamping…
Conceptually, glamping predates its entry into Oxford by some 400 years. Wiki shares the tale from the 16th century, when Scotland’s Earl of Atholl had luxurious tents crafted and adorned with palace amenities for a visit by Scottish King James V. Around the same time, the “Field of the Cloth of Gold” diplomatic summit between Henry VIII and Francis I of France in northern France brought together almost 3,000 tents and marquees, where “fountains ran with red wine,” Wiki wrote.
Wiki called it “probably the most extravagant example of palatial tent-living in history.” Ya think?
The Ottomans might beg to differ. As the sultans’ traveled between military missions and conquests, palatial – one writer called them “ostentatious” – imperial tents were pitched and maintained by teams of artisans.
The ornamentation was exquisite, with celebrations and banquets.
“We shall conquer our rivals, then we shall sing and dance,” you could almost imagine Ottoman Sultan Süleiman “the Magnificent” enthusing.
Glamping according to Facebook
Five hundred years later, where’s the consensus on glamping? Chatter on a recent Facebook post about glampers versus campers drew some keen responses. Kathleen boiled it down an RV’s scale, size, design and contents. Does your rig have numerous slide outs, more than one toilet, appliances (a dishwasher and washer/dryer – maybe an air fryer, of course), and marble floors?
“You’re definitely glamping,” she wrote.
Want to escape the label? Dial the digs back to “the basics, but nothing fancy,” whether boondocking or in a campground with full hookups, you are camping. “I consider the word glamping to be an insult,” she said.
Sixty-nine-year-old Jan has no problem calling herself a glamper, one who rides an e-bike while enjoying nature, instead of sitting at home watching TV. But a TV outside the RV?
“Ridiculous,” she said.
When you get down to the root of it, glamp, camp, RV, tent… Just get out there, Gary said.
“Who cares? Isn’t the point to encourage all of us to get out and enjoy the outdoors. No matter what you prefer, get out there, and respect our different ways of doing it.”
That said, Gary appreciates his creature comforts. “So I guess I fall into the ‘glamper’ category,” he said. “Not that I care what others think about it.”
Amy is similarly an unapologetic glamper. She’s carried food, water and clothing on her back, been rained on, fed on by bugs, and slept in tents on the ground. Given an option, “I prefer the comforts of glamping and my nice soft, clean bed.”
Yael was philosophically more fundamental. If camping involves emptying one’s own septic, it ain’t glamping.
“There is nothing glamorous about that!”
That’s something this bougie wook can agree with. Just pass the latex gloves and hand sanitizer.