Glamping is camping minus reality

There's nothing quite like a night of camping in the great outdoors.

Especially if that night includes a camp butler to build your fire and cook your s'mores, a maid to crank up the heated down comforter (covering a pillow-top mattress inside a heated tent adorned with artwork on the walls) and a chef to whip up a breakfast of French toast with huckleberries.

And all for only $595 a night, plus $110 per person.

But that's not camping, you say - and we agree.

This latest example of American excess is part of a trend called "glamourous camping" or "glamping" and it apparently is all the rage among outdoor seekers with a little bit more disposable income (and less tolerance for the challenges of the great outdoors) than most of us.

In the words of a representative of - get this - the Luxury Institute: "It's not about experiencing what Lewis and Clark did. It's about enjoying nature and all the comforts that come with the luxury lifestyle. They see it as one big seamless, wonderful experience."

But real camping has seams in it (the ones in your tent that leak when it rains) and comfort is often determined by how well your air mattress stays inflated at night.

Let's face it: "luxury lifestyle" and "camping" do not belong in the same sentence, let alone the same campground.

Part of the joy of camping is in surmounting the many little obstacles that accompany communion with nature.

That means sleeping with a tree root poking into your spine, fishing bugs out of your coffee, scraping sap out of your clothes and enduring freezing middle-of-the-night jaunts to answer nature's call, to name but a few of camping's pleasures.

Those who pay big bucks for deluxe "glamping" miss out on all that fun. And they really miss the outdoors experience, too, while enjoying a sanitized version of camping.

Some people describe it as "soft adventure" and "nature on a silver platter." We prefer the hard feel of the ground under our sleeping bags.