I fondly look back on the five day guided camping trip we took to explore the middle of Australia as The Red Centre Death March.

In my life list of Big Mistakes I Have Made, this ranks right up there in my top ten. If we get back to Oz some day, I want to visit the area again and enjoy it at a slower pace.

From the brochures it looked innocent enough, like a fun and relatively cheap way to see some beautiful wilderness. So, at 6:30 in the morning we stood sleepily outside our hotel in Alice Springs with our tiny carry-on bags and actually got on that tour bus of our own free will.

This would be the last bit of free will we would be allowed for five days.

I don't know where I left my brain the day I decided this type of trip would be a good idea for us. I'd seen the schedule. On some level I had to know this would be an extremely regimented experience. But, proving yet again that you're never too old to be completely unself-aware, I blithely signed us up.

The spousal unit and I have been self-employed for over 20 years now. We made a trade-off in financial terms in return for relative freedom. It's been a very long time since we've had anyone set a schedule for us. I should have seen this would be an issue.

We have lived in the same house for 24 years now so we aren't exactly nomadic souls. I didn't foresee that after a few weeks of packing up every morning, and then unpacking every evening at a new place, we were both going to feel the need for a bit of stability. We'd already logged over 1,800 kilometers driving on the west coast. On this leg of our trip we were going to cover nearly 1,700 kilometers more in five days and hit five different campsites of varying quality.

If I had been a little more self-aware, I would have realized that for us it would have been better at that point in our trip to pick a central location, rent a car, and take day trips from it, returning to a home base each night. But I wasn't that bright, and so we didn't.

Oh, and the icing on the cake? Ever tried marital duties in a tent with single person sleeping bags and flimsy camping cots? How about tent floors liberally coated with sand? Have you ever accidentally and painfully mixed love goo with sand while thrashing about on a sandy floor?

(Not that I have experienced any of this myself, you understand, but I hear tell that you try it once, and then you keep your bodily fluids to yourself. That's what I hear, eh.)

But I didn't take any of this into account.

And so the horror began.