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Monday, September 04, 2017

Nighttime, When Nature Calls While Camping

My teenage camping experiences, actually, my only camping experiences, involved backpacking in the Sierras. Once we even had the benefit of a burro to carry stuff. Tents - who needed those (!) - we had sleeping bags on a tarp, on top of some piney duff where we could find it! The bathroom was anyplace away from water sources and the trails, and required a small spade and a (by then, semi-squashed) roll of toilet paper.

Flash forward to 2017. I have not re-camped anyplace since those days. If I did, I would stay in a campground with a camper of some sort or type (I am just not up to sleeping on the ground at a place that took hours of an uphill climb to find anymore.) The stumbling block to even the campground however, has been where to potty in the middle of the night. Whaaat, I can hear you saying?

Imagine that you had a couple of beers around the campfire (if you had built one of those if it was even allowed, and marshmallows having been left behind as a far younger age-appropriate treat). Or how about a couple of beers (or a Martini?) at the rustic wooden picnic table where you are eating your pop-up food, expanded from tiny chunks in a foil package, add water and heat. You get sleepy and crawl into your sleeping bag in your camper. Two hours later, your bladder registers full. Really full. And you know you have to stumble a block or more to the potties. In the dark. Wild things rustling around (in black and white outfits perhaps, or with teeth in any color fur ensemble). You will never get back to sleep upon return from that fear-fraught trek.  The solution to this uncomfortable scenario is pictured below. A portable potty or to be fancy, pinky raised in the air, a Toilette Portative, with it's own little tent..........





.........with two zippered flaps for escaping fumes, one on top, and one in the back.




And the whole thing folds up into the little round bag! Impressionnant!!!!

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