When a Luxury Travel Reviewer Steps Outside Her Comfort Zone
Spending years reviewing some of the world's finest hotels and resorts has a way of recalibrating your expectations — permanently. Think plush Egyptian cotton bedding, dedicated butler service, private infinity pools overlooking the ocean, and a staff that anticipates your every need before you even articulate it. Once you've experienced that level of curated, seamless comfort, it becomes your baseline. Anything that falls short feels like a compromise.
So when my sister began campaigning for me to join her at a women's retreat hosted at an adult summer camp in Northern California, my initial reaction was a polite but firm no. Shared cabins? Communal bathrooms? No room service? I had a hard time imagining why I would willingly swap a five-star suite for something that sounded like a sleepaway camp I might have attended as a child — except now with adults who should arguably know better.
But she persisted. And eventually, I said yes. What followed was one of the most genuinely refreshing travel experiences I've had in years — and it completely reshaped how I think about the concept of comfort itself.
Growing Up a Camper — Then Slowly Losing the Thread
To be clear, I didn't grow up as someone allergic to the outdoors. Camping was a regular part of my childhood, and I have warm memories associated with it — the smell of pine trees, the sound of crickets at night, waking up to birdsong instead of an alarm. Somewhere along the way, as my career in travel writing evolved and my access to luxury properties expanded, those simpler experiences quietly fell away. They weren't replaced by anything bad; they were just replaced by something shinier. And shinier, I had assumed, was always better.
It took my sister — someone with a gift for cutting through my overcomplication — to remind me that joy and comfort are not always the same thing, and that sometimes the most restorative experiences are the ones that strip everything back.
What Adult Summer Camp Actually Looks Like
The term "adult summer camp" covers a surprisingly wide spectrum of experiences. At the higher end, some retreats offer glamping-style accommodations with real beds, private bathrooms, and elevated dining. Others lean deliberately into the nostalgic, communal spirit of traditional sleepaway camp — and the one my sister chose fell closer to that end of the dial.
The retreat was set on a sprawling property in Northern California, surrounded by towering trees and open sky. Accommodations were simple: bunk beds, shared bathrooms, and not a single monogrammed bathrobe in sight. The schedule was structured around group activities — hiking, creative workshops, campfire gatherings, morning yoga, and late-night conversations that stretched far past any reasonable bedtime.
There was no room service. No concierge. No one to fold my towel into the shape of a swan. And yet, within about twelve hours of arriving, I realized I didn't miss any of it.
The Surprising Thing That Happened to My Sense of Comfort
Here's what luxury travel, for all its genuine pleasures, can quietly do to you: it can make you a passive participant in your own experience. Everything is arranged. Everything is handled. You consume beauty and comfort rather than actively seeking it or co-creating it with others. The experience is polished, but it can also be — and I say this as someone who loves it — oddly isolating.
Adult summer camp operates on an entirely different logic. The shared inconveniences — the slightly lumpy mattress, the communal breakfast line, the bathroom schedule you negotiate with strangers who quickly become friends — create an unexpected social glue. Within a day, I was having deeper, more honest conversations with women I had just met than I typically have in a week of regular life. There's something about removing all the buffers that makes real human connection not just possible, but almost inevitable.
By the end of the retreat, I had laughed harder, slept more soundly, and felt more genuinely rested than I had after many of my most opulent hotel stays. That was the revelation: comfort is not only about thread counts and turndown service. It is also about laughter, community, fresh air, and the freedom to be unpolished.
Who Should Consider Trying Adult Summer Camp
If you're someone who has never strayed from conventional hotels or resorts, the idea of adult summer camp might sound like voluntary deprivation. It isn't. It's a different kind of luxury — one that prioritizes experience over amenity, and connection over convenience. Here's who tends to thrive in this environment:
- Women seeking meaningful connection: Many adult summer camps and retreats are specifically designed for women and built around the idea of community, creative expression, and vulnerability in a safe setting.
- Travelers experiencing burnout: If your usual trips leave you feeling like you need a vacation from your vacation, a structured but low-tech retreat can offer genuine restoration.
- People craving nostalgia with intention: There's real psychological value in revisiting the unstructured joy of childhood summers — and doing so as an adult, with full awareness, amplifies that benefit.
- Anyone open to stepping outside their comfort zone: The discomfort is part of the point. And it's temporary. The growth, it turns out, is not.
What I Brought Home With Me
I returned from Northern California without a single luxury amenity to show for my trip. No monogrammed slippers, no minibar receipts, no glossy hotel brochures tucked into my suitcase. What I brought back instead was harder to quantify: a renewed sense of ease in my own company and in the company of others, a loosened grip on the idea that comfort requires expense, and a genuine desire to do it again.
My sister, as sisters often are, was absolutely right. And I am so glad I listened.
Adult summer camp won't replace luxury travel in my life. But it has earned a permanent place alongside it — and perhaps more importantly, it has changed the lens through which I evaluate every travel experience going forward. Comfort, I now understand, comes in more forms than a five-star hotel will ever be able to offer you. Sometimes it comes in the form of a bunk bed, a campfire, and a stranger who becomes a friend before the weekend is over.