A happy camper's life

As some of you know we thought about taking advantage of recent
advancements in technology and social change on our trip: we planned
on sleeping for free in unknown people's houses using the website www.couchsurfing.org
. The idea itself is great, many travelers all around the world have
been hosted by others and it was proven that one can couchsurf on a
road trip as my friends did on their way across the U this year. Alas
it did not work for us in the beggining, partly because we send our
first 'couch requests' to potential hosts too late before arriving at
our first destination and also didn't really put much effort into it.
As it was we were forced to make use of our backup option: to camp. It
soon turned out that camping was even a better choice of accomadation
for us. Our trip was much about visting natural parks anyway, so we
appreciated sleeping outdoors and there were many outstanding
campgrounds close to places we visited. We were more flexible, as we
could decide were to sleep very late in the day (hard to do with
couchsurfing, when you have to know im advance where you'll be in the
next couple of days) and we didn't have to look for computers with
Internet access - it turned out the couchsurfing website does not
fully support the iPhone web browser.

Consequently we also adjusted our diets, eating habits and food
supplies to a camper's life. This in turn allowed us to not only save
money, which itself played a decisive role in what we were eating, but
allowed to enjoy our meals outdoors in many splendid locations.

Photographs:
1. Oatmeal lunch at the Old Faithful Geyser in Yellowstone
2. Lunch in Badlands
3. Corn for lunch in Ohio
4. Oatmeal breakfast at Lake Erie, Indiana
5. The camper's breakfast golden standard: oats, jam and milk (Black
Hills, South Dakota)