i haven't done any camping lately how about you
oh not recently we we've done a little bit of car camping uh since since i got married and did a little bit of backpacking several years ago but uh not recently
were these extended trips or just a weekend or
well not real long maybe three four days at the most how about you
uh that's about what i've done but it goes back even further to my childhood camping went out camping and and the purpose was not to camp the purpose was to fish
um-hum
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and there were no motels in in the wilds of New Mexico
so if you wanted to go fish for a few days you would uh and at certain lakes that were definitely off the beaten track you would do what you i think what you call car camping
right
i mean the car's there and and you may or may not sleep on a cot outside of it or inside the car or
but uh nothing too elaborate in the way of tents and
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i've actually even slept on the ground
yeah well i've done a little bit of that too um i guess i've kind of done the full range of camping anywhere from backpacking in the mountains for
for a week at a time to the the car camping kind of thing
where did you do your backpacking
well i've done some down in um Tennessee and Kentucky that area North Carolina and then done some in New Mexico
and some out in Montana Colorado
so i've kind of gone around and done it number of places
but this was in years past or yeah
right
i used to work at um summer camps um a lot when i was in high school and college and i worked at some summer camps in New Mexico where um
the emphasis there was on backpacking exclusively
around Philmont or something
right um-hum you've been there
no i haven't no but every Boy Scout i've ever known has camped at Philmont
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yeah yeah well it's a very popular place and i worked there three summers so got to know it pretty well
yeah i guess i don't know do you think it's it's as safe as it used to be to go camping
well probably the biggest concern that i would have now is getting safe drinking water um
cause a lot of times we'd just pull water out of a stream and um use that and i was never really big on using a lot of chemicals for water purification and treatment um
and nowadays i think i'd be a little bit more cautious about that than i used to be
yeah when when i was in growing up in New Mexico if we went on a picnic or whatever it was always in the mountains we lived in the southwestern corner of the state so we could go to the mountains or the desert
just pick a place and if you were needed water the you'd find a stream and drink right out of the stream
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when i left New Mexico and moved to Missouri i would not have dreamed drinking out of any stream that i saw there
right
so i guess partly it depends on on how isolated the river is
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but uh course i i mean even in in New Mexico you always had the possibility of a cow or uh some other critter upstream a ways from you
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um what about crime in camp sites do you think that's a problem
well i suppose in some of the real big parks and stuff that could be an issue
but generally i haven't ever found that to be a problem usually people are very friendly and
um cooperative all the way around so i've never deemed that as a threat to myself but
yeah
been been fairly careful about not leaving tempting things out in the campsite and stuff like that
oh yeah yeah it you hide your fishing gear and your camera and all that sort of stuff don't tempt people
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right and usually if i'm backpacking of course there i don't worry about it much at all because if
there's something there that they want they'd have to haul it out a long ways so they usually would think twice about it
that's right
so
i have a good friend who goes backpacking about twice a year in the Grand Canyon
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he's he's really uh hung up on that Grand Canyon
you know i've had some friends of mine that have made the trip down through there a couple of times they really enjoy it but
there's something about going down in a hole that just um doesn't really relate that strongly to me i suppose i'll try it someday but i always like to climb mountains and get up where i can see something
yeah
yeah i i think with the case like in the case of the canyon you see more from the rim than you would ever camping down inside of it
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yeah are there mountains in Wisconsin for you to go out and climb or
well no it's more mostly just some rolling hills so there isn't really much
