An iPad in the wild
While I wouldn’t describe myself as an avid outdoors-man, I do enjoy being around nature and getting out of the normal “rat race” from time-to-time. One escape for my family is to go camping a few times during the summer. The last two trips I’ve brought my iPad along and at the suggestion of a friend here are some notes on how it fared.
Wikipedia defines camping as “Camping is an outdoor recreational activity. The participants (known as campers) leave urban areas, their home region, or civilization and enjoy nature while spending one or several nights outdoors, usually at a campsite. Camping may involve the use of a tent, caravan, cabin, a primitive structure, or no shelter at all.” Sorry, but that’s not how I roll. Let me get this out of the way first. We don’t camp in tents or even a cabin. We camp in, what I like to call a small mobile home that happens to be located in a campground. It has running water, air conditioning, satellite tv, beds, and a functioning toilet. I’d be lying if I said we “rough it” when we go camping. I might be lying to myself by calling it “camping”, but I digress. With all of these creature comforts, I rarely find the need to pull out any electronic gadget aside from a digital camera because there’s always some form of entertainment a few feet away from us at all times. The first time I brought the iPad with us on an outdoor outing I only pulled it out of my bag once and used it for all of 5 minutes. The second time is different. A digital Swiss army knife
For starters, I used it to type this post. I’d call that progress, wouldn’t you? It’s also been used it to offload photos. Not even a full camping day in and it proved itself to be invaluable. While I’ve only scratched the surface as far as what I can do with the iPad in the great outdoors, a great friend of mine has taken his iPad with him on many camping trips this summer. I’m hoping he’ll share some of his insights soon.
