If I had to pick my favorite area to camp, it would be at a lake. In addition to the experience of living in a tent, which I enjoy anywhere, actually, think of all the extra activities at your disposal on a lake: swimming, tubing, kayaking, canoeing, fishing, water skiing, boating, rafting– the list could go on and on. It’s no mystery why permanent residential summer camps are situated on lakes!

However, I don’t set up camp right at the lake’s edge when at a man-made lake fed by dammed water upstream. I look for a site on higher ground, a short walk to the water. For one thing, camping right at the lake itself (man-made or natural) makes for colder nights and chilly mornings, because cold air masses settle over lakes in the evenings. There can be as much as a ten to fifteen degree difference in temperature between a campsite right on the water and one up and away from it somewhat. Once, in northwest Georgia, we camped at the top of a hill by a lake, and not only did we have breathtaking views of the sunrise over the water, but we also were free of the frost coating everyone’s tents down at the lakeside.

For another thing (and I know this earns me a Worry-Wart prize), I don’t want to be washed into oblivion if a dam upstream leaks, breaks, or simply overflows due to heavy amounts of rain; in fact, where I would wait prolonged lightening storms out in other locations, I might pack it all up and head home from a man-made lake. I don’t remember the specifics, but in Spain some years back an entire campground was inundated and lakeside sites (and campers) washed away in a major storm that overwhelmed a dam. But dams can give at any moment (see this Reader’s Digest story, for example), and I feel it’s better to be safe than sorry.

Finally, if you camp right at the water, your site is liable to be right where the party is, day and night, whereas you’ll be more secluded if you have a bit of a walk to the lake.

So give me a high ground to set up camp on, for more comfortable temperatures and safety, and a lake to walk to, for hours of watery fun, and I am, once again, a happy camper.