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We're not much of a camping family. When I was in Cub Scouts, we went camping once, and my dad snored the whole time and kept me up. It wasn't that fun.

When I was 12, my mum put us in a summer camp meant for children from low-income families. It was in upstate New York where we had to live in tents, fetch water, cook our meals, and even dig our own toilet bowls.

When I was 12 years old, I went to swim in a lake, and I almost died in that lake because the water was too deep - much deeper than I thought.

When I was a boy, one of my uncles had a cabin on a lake in Wisconsin. My family went there for parts of three summers, and I loved it!

I'm really an outdoorsy girl. People think I can't go anywhere without getting all primped up, but I love to go camping, and I'm totally fine with not doing my hair or makeup, not taking a shower and just hiking.

Just about every weekend when I was growing up, we would throw rods and rifles and tents and shovels and pickaxes into the back of the truck and then head off to the side of a mountain or the bottom of a canyon. Hiking, fishing, hunting, rock-hounding: this is how my parents passed the time.

I, more or less, love camping out, so I dug it, but I didn't enjoy other people's pain.

My youngest brother and I went on a ten-day canoe trip in Bowron Provincial Park in British Columbia years ago. Believe it or not, we took only granola, thinking we'd be eating a lot of lake trout. Well, we neglected to bring along a net, and our fishing line was only 8-lb. test.

Midwest kids got to summer camp. There is something very special about being away from your parents for the first time, sleeping under the stars, hiking and canoeing.