It hit me the other day when the first-grade teacher asked students what they’d buy if they had a hundred dollars.

My 6-year-old daughter, Tess, replied: “I’d buy Lotto tickets so my daddy could win so he wouldn’t have to work on weekends and he could play with me more.”

The day definitely had come to book some quality time with my little girl.

And what better way to do it than a camping trip. I hadn’t camped out since I was a kid and figured this would be a great father-daughter bonding experience. It would give her a greater appreciation for nature and show her what life was like before fax machines, AOL and ‘NSync.

Little did I know that at one point during our camping trip, Tess would be in the adjoining tent watching 101 Dalmatians on a newfound friend’s VCR, the people in the adjoining campsite would be cooking up steaks on a stainless-steel propane grill, and the guy down the way would be talking on his cell phone while drawing ice-cold Budweisers from the beer tap he had in his motor home.

Hello, Muddah. Hello, Faddah. Here I am at Camp Ramada.

“You see campers with VCRs, satellite dishes, CD players, you name it,” said Ranger Rick Redding of Oleno State Park in High Springs. “They want to get away from the house, but they bring half the house with them.”

Roughing it ain’t quite what it used to be. Some of these “campers” have flushing toilets, hot showers and everything but the Orlando Sentinel delivered to their campsites each morning. Hardship for today’s campers means Wal-Mart has run out of replica ceramic logs for their gas-powered campfires.

And isn’t it only a matter of time before you hear of a camper layering graham crackers with chunks of Hershey’s chocolate, topping them with marshmallows and shoving them into the microwave? In a matter of secondsbeep! beep! beep! — hot, gooey s’mores.

Coming soon to a campground near you: Escalators for those steep uphill sections of the hiking trail.

You know camping isn’t what it once was when you have to call Ticketmaster to get campsite reservations. That’s right, two months ago our brilliant politicians contracted Ticketmaster to handle all bookings for the state parks.

Um, sir, it looks like there’s been a little mix-up. Our records show you do not have reservations for Campsite 14, but you do have two lower-bowl seats for U2.

As you can tell, our camping trip didn’t go quite as planned. For all the modern conveniences, it didn’t stop Mother Nature from dumping 4 inches of rain on us in two nights.

Still, during one brief respite from the rain, the stars came out and we sat around the fire and told jokes.

“Daddy,” she said, “do you know what’s green and pecks on trees?”

What?

“Woody Wood Pickle.”

She busted out laughing. I busted out laughing. And the clouds busted out with another deluge.

But it didn’t matter to her.

As we lay in our leaky tent before going to sleep that last night, she asked eagerly, “Daddy, when are we going camping again?”

Soon, honey. Really soon.

And then we fell asleep to the distant wail of a ringing cell phone.