Restless Legs Syndrome (RLS) Discussion Board

My husband and I are thinking of going camping. We just gave our pop-up tent trailer to one of our sons because it didn't meet our needs anymore. That said, it will be a while until we save up enough to purchase a travel trailer and we are considering going back to the tent camping we did years ago. This time however, I will be sure that comfort is the number one consideration. I have researched all the amenities such as heaters, cots with mattresses and comfy chairs. This would all be housed in a roomy tent. My question is this: has anyone in this group gone camping with RLS? How did it go? What was the biggest challenge? Any input is appreciated. We live in the mountains of northern Idaho and within reasonable traveling distance of 2 national parks. I really want to get back out there!

I'm an RLS camper. Started in a tent, then pop-up, now travel trailer. Wasn't much of an issue pre-augmentation. I'm off meds now and up multiple times per night with symptoms, and it does concern me a bit anytime I travel, whether camping or hotel. I just deal with it, same as I would at home. I just have a smaller space to do my nightly pacing and stretching. Just last weekend, I slept in a tent with my son for two nights at a family golf tournament. If my RLS got bad enough, I just left the tent and walked and stretched outside until my legs settled down. Good luck!

I'm thinking we will get a roomy enough tent for a chair and camp table so I can do crosswords by lantern light. I don't want to give up camping so I'll make it as comfy as possible.

It sounds like you will be all set. I always had a little port a potty in our tent. I hated walking at night to out houses, in the woods. I wouldn't mind walking outside around the tent though.

Cliff and I used to go backpacking, staying in "huts". (In New Zealand these are buildings ranging from primitive to almost deluxe with kitchen facilities and even flush toilets.) After a while I'd take codeine so my legs wouldn't hurt but before that I was up a lot. I saw incredible stars, crystal clear Milky Way and even heard a kiwi calling. After my worst night of two hours sleep I had to hike 18k out. Luckily it was almost all downhill.
Have fun, BassetMom, and stay comfortable.

just watch out for those bears while your pacing around outside in the middle of the night.

I am aware of bears, we live in a high population bear area. When I get really nervous is when we camp in Glacier National Park, which is about 4 hours away. There are grizzlies there! The last time I slept in a tent in Glacier was about 16 years ago. I'm not sure I could do that again. We're hoping to get in a camping trip before summer is gone.

New Zealand has no snakes, no bears or any other dangerous mammals. Before settlers brought in mammals the only ones here were small native bats. When camping, the only frightening thing is when a possum is heavy breathing and grunting outside your tent. Their eyes glow red and it seems as if the devil himself has come up from hell. They won't try to get in the tent though.

That is quite a vivid description! I think I would like to try camping in New Zealand.

We don't have anything to fear when camping here in N.I. other than the weather.

Twice, many years ago, about 30/35 years ago, we went camping.
First time we took a trailer tent. That was a faff... making the seating into a bed etc. Then the two adults and one child can't move or do anything until it is all put away again. It rained pretty much every day. We trekked miles to see the butterfly garden. I was looking forward to all the pretty butterflies. Hah !! it was a corner where the grass and meadow flowers were't cut to allow for feeding butterflies,,,, which were nowhere to be seen.

Second time a couple of years later it was a large frame tent with a divider making three rooms. Plastic roll up windows, sewn in ground sheet. You could stand upright in it. A portable two ring gas stove, enough room for two adults and one 10 year old to move about fairly comfortably.
At 3am in the morning the rain came down in torrents, we were using anything we could to dig a trench around the tent. We were on a slight slope from back to front and reckoned the water would run into the 'trench' at the back, make its way around the sides and run out the front where we had lowered the sides of the trench for water to run away. Some other campers battled it like us. Others packed up and left the camp site in the middle of the night.

I have never camped since.

Wow! I don't blame you Betty. We've had some similar experiences too. On our last family camping trip with all 5 kids, we couldn't find a camp site in Yellowstone so had to go outside the park to a KOA. The spot was out in a field and there was no shelter from the wind. We got the kids fed, in the dark, and finally my husband and I got to eat. That's when the rain started. We 7 soaked people gathered in the not so big tent and decided to stick it out and look for a site the next day. We found a site and had a good time. But that was the last full family trip. Several years ago while camping in Glacier with our tent trailer, the heater didn't work and it was miserably cold. Sept. can be cold in Glacier. We stuck it out and I froze the entire time. My husband is not one for giving up. Our good experiences out weigh the bad so we keep on camping. Although, at 71, I can see an end in sight.

Betty and 2BassetMom, your stories reminded me of a few of my camping experiences. Thankfully, I'd had others that were good prior or I'd never have tried again, either!

The first was in Wyoming in March. It's COLD in the Wyoming mountains in March! We were the ONLY people in the entire park; it was 60 F during the day, but below freezing that night. That wasn't a big problem - I snuggled with my partner . But, the bear that started nosing around our tent (we didn't have any food - we ate and threw away the remnants properly) around 3 AM and wouldn't leave the campsite was a bit disconcerting. Bear finally left and so did we. I couldn't get back to sleep, lol.

The next night (we were on a trip from Colorado to Minnesota to see a friend and just out of college with few funds) we camped in South Dakota in The Badlands. Seemed great when we set up the tent. Then the wind started. By midnight, it was constant and pushing on the walls of the tent. Around 2 AM, I realized that the poles of the tent (an old dome tent, circa 1980s) were pushing on me because of the wind. By 3 AM, partner and I had about half of the tent available - again, snuggling was nice, but I really wanted to sleep because we hadn't slept much the night before. By 5 AM, we had about a 1/4 of the tent floor available as the walls poles had completely inverted on the one side; we got up and exited to find that the tent stakes had literally been pulled out of the ground because of the high winds.

Fast forward about a year; same partner and I are now living in Texas and went to Turner Falls (IIRC, that was the name) in Oklahoma to spend a wonderful weekend and cool off in the river and falls. It was 100 in Dallas and we were looking forward to a lovely weekend swimming and cavorting in the river. Had a beautiful camp site close to the river - we came on Friday afternoon to make sure we got a good space. We splashed in the river and made dinner; as we were eating, the sky clouded up quickly and it started raining. And raining. And raining. The water was soon running in sheets over the area we were camped as it headed to the river. The entire base of the tent was floating on water. Even though water resistant, that poor tent couldn't handle it. We packed up at around 10 PM and headed back to hot Dallas.

My guess is that a bunch of us here could keep us regaled in such stories!

I "camp" for work every summer. Usually we;re in individual pup tents with a bigger tent for a kitchen and another one for an "office", 1000W generator charges the tablets we use to record data, satellite phones, & VHF radios. When it rains a lot, depending on your set-up, it can become impossible to keep things dry. Basically wet clothes and boots all day, change into still-damp camp clothes when you get back from the field work, change into the only dry clothes you have at night. Next day, put the wet stuff back on and repeat. My WED/RLS gets really bad when I'm cold, wet and tired, especially if I have to sit in a helicopter at the end of the day to get back to camp. The need to pace at night is worst when the conditions for pacing outside your tent are worst! But on the flip side, if I don't let myself get too exhausted, it's better for my symptoms to be walking all day than sitting in an office.

My guess is that a bunch of us here could keep us regaled in such stories!

I'm sure we could. I too had a river come through my tent once, and on our first bike camping trip in New Zealand we rented a tent which turned out to have the wrong size tent poles. That was interesting! and with hard rain one night the poles didn't support the tent. You have to laugh!

I went back to college at age 52 along with our youngest son. What fun! When I was in my last semester, age 56, we took Wilderness Survival. One of the most useful classes we took. But it involved a winter sleepover in a snow shelter we had to erect. We snowshoed into a spot not far from home up off of a mountain pass. It was hard work and we were glad to get into dry clothes and crawl into our sleeping bags. We had borrowed "mummy bags" because those are usually down. I should have checked. We were up shivering at 3am making pots of tea and sitting together singing camp songs to stay awake and warmish. Nightmare of a night but we got top grade for our effort. When I let the dogs out in the middle of the night in the winter and it is cold and snowy I do believe I have flashbacks to that awful night.