I love camping. Growing up, my parents would take us camping a few times each summer, and I looked forward to spending time in a tent with my family even more than getting to stay in a fancy hotel. There is something so special about being alone with your family out in nature. It’s a different kind of connection with each other and the environment when you are away from the city and the stress and the noise; it feels like going home. You can’t get much closer to your family than living out of a tent together. My favorite time together is in the evening after the dishes are cleaned – campfires, roasting marshmallows, playing games by flashlight, and telling stories to each other.
My husband and I now are the ones taking our boys on camping trips. We go on week+ long trips. In addition to being quite fun, it’s a much cheaper way of traveling than staying in a hotel, and a way to sneak in an extra vacation into the year on a budget. Friends have asked me when a good age is to start taking your kids camping, and I think they are surprised with my answer. If you want to go camping, just go, don’t wait. There is no magic age. I went camping when I was pregnant and again as soon as it was warm enough in the summer. Our son was 9 months old. It wasn’t much harder to go camping with him than it was to pack up to go to Grandma and Grandpas.
You deal with diapers the same way – bring a changing pad in your backpack for when you’re hiking and a garbage bag for dirty diapers. They can take naps in the baby bjorn while you are out exploring. You can hold them while eating at the picnic table, or there are camping chairs that attach to the table. Pack n plays work just fine in the tent, or when they are older we used air mattresses with bumpers around the edges. Pick a camp site closer to the bathrooms when they are learning to use the potty, so you don’t have as far to run in the middle of the night, and choose a campground with a nice bathroom so you feel like you can get cleaned up. The National and State Parks often have great campgrounds with well taken care of bathrooms.
We didn’t have problems with either of our sons waking up crying at night when we went camping. I’m not sure if that’s because we wore them out playing outside all day or if they felt cozy inside the tent. We did bring a battery-powered sound maker that made wave sounds once. My brother’s family was in the campsite next to us, and in the morning, they asked us if we could hear the waves of Lake Superior. (We were at least a mile from the shore).
Regardless of the age you decide you are ready to take your kids camping, remember that camping trips are never perfect, so this isn’t something to strive for. The best camping stories are the ones of survival anyway – making it through winds that ripped the stakes out of the ground, the thunderstorm with lightning that split nearby trees, the tent dripping so much you woke up in a puddle, the bear that wandered through your campsite, the supper you had eat without ketchup because you forgot it… I love camping as much because of these stories as I do despite them.
Maybe you went camping with your family when you were growing up, maybe you didn’t; either way, the first time you go (or maybe every time you go) it might seem overwhelming to figure out what to pack, what to eat and how to cook it outside. Take some time to plan (and pack) beforehand.
See my list page for my Camping List if you don’t have a list yet; hopefully it’s a good place to start. Also, see my list page for Menu Ideas of easy kid-approved meals that can be quickly made outside.
Good luck and hang in there when things don’t go as you planned. I hope your family has as much fun living your own camping stories as we have.
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