…CAMPORAMA is a new festival and showplace for outdoor recreation.  Outdoor recreation is about health, you and your family’s mental, physical, moral and spiritual well being; it’s about wellness, happiness, satisfaction.  We value the individual experience of facing challenges whether they are found on rocks, roads, water, hill or dale; we connect with others who share those moments, we encourage our community, our friends to share those experiences. Experiencing nature, “The Great Outdoors,” leads us from understanding ourselves to understanding our need of others: to show, to guide, to share with them our outdoor recreation experiences.

Americans have always cherished nature,  and sought to preserve and protect our common ground, those places where we gather to visit and play and admire the work of creation. From the neat square common greens of New England’s towns to the vast wildernesses of the far Pacific coast, we have seen the value of simply being outside, outdoors, and when we have added  a recreational component, bridle trails, bicycling, hiking, camping; then we become participants, not spectators, we put ourselves into the picture, we become part of the outdoors.

Literally hundreds of ways are found to participate, with large numbers of us enjoying them same experiences,  everything from running on tracks and trails, riding horses, bicycles, ATV’s, motocross, hill climbs, soaring and even general aviation. We boat on ponds, glassy lakes, broad still rivers, rushing streams, raging rapids, we sail in choppy coastal waterways and slick estuarial bays.   

And hundred’s and hundreds of voices speak for us, a great chorus of groups, each singing their own tune. And this is good. Every segment of outdoor recreation needs its own voice, its own guardians; those who have “been there and done that” those who now the thrill and the threats to their favorite activity.

There are river keepers,  and back country ATV enthusiasts, and environmentalists and buck hunters, folks who jog in parks and ironman competitors, kayakers and water skiers,  bird watchers and ducks unlimited, Motor Coachers and tent campers, and the list goes on.

We call such folks “special interest groups” as if it was wrong to value one thing over another, we call those who speak for them “do-gooders, “mouthpieces,” and worst of all “lobbyists.”

Yet without them, there would be no State or National Parks, no lakefronts or seashores for all of us to enjoy. We might not have stands of Redwoods, or Poplars in old growth forests, we might not see eagles roosting, or hear whooping cranes, or even hear song birds or follow the flight of monarch butterflies.

And without those stewards of the forest, those who own care for millions of acres; and the thousands of farmers who work to protect and conserve their lands, defeat erosion and protect rich soil from despoliation, we might have many fewer places to enjoy the outdoors.

CAMPORAMA is a festival to celebrate what has been left to us by generations, and help assure that we will leave earth a better place for those yet to see the “marshes of glenn” or hear the Chattahoochee brook fall over stones as it rushes through the Hills of Habersham.  It is a gathering place for giants, for each of you who would see a better world for your children to play in, who would see a favorite place left cleaner, more natural, more inspiring that when you found it.

CAMPORAMA is a show place to see what’s new in outdoor recreation products, and to see them outdoors, in sunlight and in clean air. From RV’s to tent poles, from trail mixes to cast iron skillets frying fish, from spandex to rucksacks, we hope you’ll find a better way to celebrate the gifts of nature we all share.