The Israeli Campground
So here I was now in North America, sola with a car and a tent – a different kind of adventure altogether. No problem getting an automatic here – most or all rental cars are automatic. Prices are low. You can get insured through your credit card!!!
In contrast to the cheapness of the gas and the car rental, the campgrounds themselves were expensive for a single person.
It was all new and strange to me. In Israel, campgrounds are a mess of tents set one next to the other as space allows. You pay at the gate and then it’s up to you to find the few square meters to build your tent on, delineate an amorphic territory. People’s music and BBQs are right in your ears and noses. Privacy is not to be sought here. The difference between various campgrounds on the Kinneret (Sea of Galilee) was that some had noise restrictions after midnight while others played loud music until the wee hours …
The following pic shows our campsite for the Nataraj Festival at Metzokey Daragot, Dead Sea. People perch their tents wherever they find space.

The North American Campground
Coming to my first American campground was a revelation… My space was reserved in advance. The lady in charge expected me and cared which time I arrived. I got a spot over the water as shown and, strangely, I was soon to discover, the whole territory was mine, including the picnic table, the grass patch and the space (not shown) for parking the car…

The vast majority of the campgrounds I visited later had some contraption for making a fire as well – all the way from half a barrel stuck in the ground to a fancy structure with a grid on top. All of them sold firewood for people who, unlike me, knew how to make fires.
There was an ecological reason for that as well. Wood carries insects and other creatures from place to place. In national parks in particular, they disallow bringing your own wood. I decided to leave mastering the fire-making art for my next trip, even though on some cold nights it might have been nice to have one. On the other hand, I figured, if I got really nice and warm standing or sitting by the fire, I would freeze even worse when I got back into the cold tent to sleep….
Not only do all campsites have a parking, but almost without exception, they are super clean and safe for tenting. The ground might be grassy or sandy or just plain earth (I cannot accept the word “dirt” to describe our sacred soil, so I use the translation from the word in Hebrew, Adama – Earth). There are never any rocks or gravel, nothing to scratch or tear the bottom, and in almost all cases it was easy to stick in the pegs. The difficulty was actually to FIND a rock to hammer those pegs in. Camping regulars drive around with a special rubber hammer for pounding the pegs…
In many campgrounds I was specifically told not to step through other people’s sites, especially RV sites. You wouldn’t get shot, obviously, but it is considered, for the time you are there at least, to be private property… Quiet time is invariably 10 pm and even generators are usually not allowed.
Well, the price for all that luxury was also remarkable: $30!!! Some campgrounds, like Jigger Johnson, that had no electricity, were cheaper, and the Canadian ones ended up cheaper because of the exchange rate.
From my hosteling days I remember paying $8 for a bunk bed in a beautiful hostel in New Mexico with a large well-furnished and partially stocked kitchen. There was also a large communal room to hang out. Later down the line we used to pay 40$ for an average motel with nice clean twin or double bed, three kinds of towels, a TV, and little soaps and shampoos. What happened?
Most of the American and Canadian campgrounds I stayed in did not have spaces to socialize, common kitchens or gathering rooms. The setup did not enable easy socializing. Most of the time, meeting people happened despite the setup, not thanks to it. A few notable exceptions were: Sidney’s KOA, which had a nice meeting room, and the Chowder House hangout at Meat Cove, Cape Breton. In several campgrounds, like the Lazy Lions in Vermont or Campbell’s Cove in PEI there actually were common kitchens or meeting rooms, but in real time I always found them empty. Perhaps my luck, or just that most campers, being either couples or families, did not have a use for them.
The campground pictured above (Lobster Buoy, Maine) was full of RVs with families vacationing. It was still August and it was Lobster Day weekend, so the place was full of visitors.
I did not realize then that in many campgrounds people actually lived on a “temporary-permanent” basis… These residents often had their names on plaques, the boundaries of their sites marked by colorful Christmas lights. To make their lives more cheerful and homey they would rent from the owners, or bring with them, various trinkets for decorations – garden gnomes, little fountains, sculptures, dolls. Sometimes whole sections of the campgrounds where inhabited that way like a little suburb. One wonders if this is a positive life choice or another side effect of the lingering economic crisis.

(Lazy Lions CG in Vermont)
The Messenger is Part of the Message
From my account of American campgrounds you can learn just as much about Israel and about me as about American campgrounds. I once read a paperback called “The Russians”. From what the author found important to mention about the Russians, I learned even more about how Americans perceive the outside world.
Israel is located in the middle of everything and therefore Israelis might have more tools to understand foreign cultures on many sides of the spectrum. Even so, we all see the world in the spectacles of how we were raised and where we grew up: the colors, sounds, smells, words, dimensions, the music of our upbringing.