Comment by UI_at_80x24 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by UI_at_80x24 | Hacker News Reader

I share alot of the same feelings as expressed in the article. Parks, camping, and 'wild areas' are victims of their own success. Where I live the largest Provincial Park is an 8 hour drive away for me, but only 4'ish hours from Toronto. The article talks about car-camping and towed trailers but even areas that require a 2 hour canoe trip and multiple portages to get to and it is still decimated by tourists.

Even though the barrier to entry is high, and isn't in the same ball-park as these car-campers there are far too many people trying to spend some time under the trees, and the park is being damaged.

Contrast this period with the 1980's. Disposable income is (apparently) lower now then it was back then. Back in my childhood several of my neighbours would have campers, or boats, or snowmobiles; and many opportunities to use them throughout the year. Now when I look around I only see 1 on my entire block, and with entire segments of the economy closing for good, factories being emptied; I see the golden era of the union, and 'extra' money as a thing of the past.

So how are all these people able to afford crowding our parks? The article talks about this decline almost as if it's a recent thing, but I have seen this same pattern going back over 10 years.

The only way I can find a reasonable amount of peace and quiet is to goto Crown Land, and multi-day canoe trips into the wild.

>> So how are all these people able to afford crowding our parks?

It is younger people. Whereas young families might once have gone to places like disney world, provincial parks are now the cheap family vacation. Reliable GPS, weather forecasting and cellphones have also made previously "remote" areas very accessible. There are no secret places anymore.

We did family camping when I was a kid because it was the cheapest vacation. It was never a luxury good.

Likewise here. Camping was certainly the cheap way to go, especially if the alternative included the cost of restaurant food on top of lodging. Now that I'm grown up with kids, we still camp, though we've also done a number of vacations where we rent an apartment for a week, with a kitchen.

But there were other benefits to camping as well. Small kids don't belong in hotels and restaurants -- it's a nightmare for everybody. And the process of getting them in and out of those accommodations eats up half the day.

And if you're camping, that itself becomes the entertainment, so the sightseeing side of it doesn't have to be as spectacular. Last summer we made our way across the northern shore of Lake Superior -- possibly one of my favorite places in the world. There are no bucket-list tourist destinations unless you count the Wawa Goose, yet it was just a blast and quite relaxing.

>> Small kids don't belong in hotels and restaurants

Uh, what???

I think what they mean is that (from my experience on both sides) small kids are noisy, messy and very active. This makes parenting in a shared environment (if you care about your neighbors) hard. When you go camping the kids have space, can get dirty, get tired and go to bed early. I'll take a crying baby camping over banging and yelling through a hotel room wall any day.

Yes, precisely. Now of course not all kids are the same, but hoping for several hours of quiet behavior after being cooped up a car -- possibly strapped into a child seat -- all day was unrealistic in our case. There are other problems as well: Finding a restaurant with healthy food that everybody will enjoy, without breaking the bank. And hotel rooms are filthy.

Granted, it could be a matter of personal preference as well. I enjoy the outdoors, and my own cooking, more than the inside of a restaurant or hotel.

Yes, both my mother and my wife's mother were baby boomers who hated camping because it's all their families could afford growing up.

'Camping', in Canada at least, is now more and more about people driving an RV up to a park with boats and ATVs attached. If there ever was a golden age of gentleperson light-touch adventure in the outdoors it is certainly gone now.

>> golden age of gentleperson light-touch adventure

It never really existed. People during the glory days still pooped in the woods. They cut down trees for firewood. They walked off trail. They stored their food improperly and then shot the bear that came for it. The rules against such things didn't exist then. They do now.

While I agree with the other commenter that camping was always a cheap option, I think you're right on the money about GPS/weather/phones and young people.

I think the problem is a result of a combination of tech as well as cheap camping gear making all of it easier, and the popularity of it with young people more than perhaps in the past.

Overall, disposable income is up significantly since the 1980s. Like about double. (Which isn’t to say we couldn’t do better with unions and increased minimum wage.)

https://mobile.twitter.com/Noahpinion/status/130337025075527...

Just an FYI, Algonquin is the third largest Provincial Park in Ontario. The largest is Polar Bear (3x larger than Algonquin), but it is only reachable by air and you need special permission to visit. Wabakimi is also a bit larger than Algonquin and has road and rail access.

Very true, and my apologies. I mentally added 'Southern' without typing it. I live a stones throw away from Detroit, MI so all of the good parts of Ontario are a long ways away from me.

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