I grew up in a family that camped for vacation trips. Dad was a scoutmaster for many years, and both my brother and I did the Boy Scouts thing. The family camped for vacations because that was the only way we could afford to take the vacation trips we did. Yup, tent all the way.
When I got married, my bride had never been camping, and it took me a while to convince her that she wouldn't die, but we borrowed my parents tent, and went one weekend to a state park we'd camped at often when I was a kid. We got there Friday evening, and there was only one site left. It was a low spot at the bottom of a hill, and right away I saw that it was a loser of a site if it were to rain, as all the water off the hill and from all the surrounding sites would pool there. We planned to stay a week, no rain was forecast until at least monday, so we took the site with plans to move on sunday when all the weekenders went home.
You guessed it, gully washer that very night. Fortunately we were sleeping on cots, and though I was awaked when it started raining, I knew there was nothing I could do about it and fell back asleep. I was awaked a bit later by something bumping into my butt, flipped on a flashlight, and it was the suitcase under my cot floating in the lake.
In the morning, the floor of the tent had a couple inches of mud on it, and all our stuff that wasn't up on the cots with us was wet. We dragged the tent, all 10,000 lbs of it, across the road and into the creek to wash the mud out, and headed for home with the trunk of the car dribbling water. It took me several years to convince her to try it again.
We've been married now for 46 years, and she came to accept tent camping although one of her requirements was that wherever we went, she had to have her daily hot shower. As long as I picked places that had one, she was willing to go. Half a dozen years ago we bought our travel trailer, and she has been much happier with that compared to the tent, not least of which was due to having her own hot shower!
It didn't hurt any when I put a new foam mattress in the TT last year. That bed is even more comfortable than the one in the sticks 'n' bricks, so it's been fairly easy to get her to go camping lately.
