5 Steps to the Perfect Family Camping Trip

 

The crew's ready to help

Step 1:  Start planning your trip before the campgrounds open for the season.  Meet with the family to get everyone’s input.  Determine the type of camping experience your family wants, a family campground with lots of amenities or a primitive campsite with no electricity or showers.  Consider everyone’s abilities at this stage of your planning; hiking, rafting, horseback riding, town festivals, and amusement parks.  Don’t forget to include the ability to travel for long distances in a car/van.

Step 2:  Gather details about things to do in the states, parks, or areas that you plan to visit; brochures, websites, and tour books from travel clubs.  Don’t forget to factor in driving distances and travel times.  Time zones or ferry schedules need to be considered in addition to the amount of driving time per day if you have a long haul to make.  Rest stops are crucial for tired drivers, children who need to use the restroom, or having an unhurried picnic lunch.  

Step 3:  Check your camping equipment to be sure you have what is needed to make the type of camping experience desired.  Families can stay at larger campgrounds with cabins available.  Some cabins have barbeques to use for meals.  All you need are sleeping bags, towels, and kitchen utensils in addition to personal items. 

Step 4:  Once you have a vacation plan and the dates for the trip, begin reserving your campground site(s).  If you are camping in several places during your vacation, remember to consider breaking camp and travel time and distance and alert your next campground of your possible arrival time so they hold your campsite for you, especially if you’ll be getting in late.

Step 5:  Packing.  Get everyone involved to build excitement and family experience.  Make check lists for kitchen, bedding, clothing, food, and toiletry.  Don’t forget the bug spray, sun screen, hats, and raincoats.  Load the vehicle and/or camper prior to the day of departure, except for perishables.  Bring any reservation material you have made, a global positioning device [GPS] and maps.  Always bring current maps of the areas you will be driving through or staying in. 

Then enjoy your family camping experience.  Make the memories that count.       

How to Entertain the Family at Camp Without a Car

Always the Fisherman

Whereas our son is a born fisherman—mosquito bites and all—his father is not.  However on vacation in New Brunswick, Canada, everyone needs to enjoy his or herself.  So while the men drove off in the van to go fishing, we ladies stayed at camp and tried to entertain ourselves. 
 

            No pool or playground at this campground, and the mosquitoes were indeed biting.  It was a hot and sticky evening, so the four girls and I sat around one of the dinette tables, two to a bench seat, the youngest pulled up the port-a-potty at the head of the table.  We chatted about our options for entertainment while a small fan dried our backs slightly as it swung from side to side.

 

            “Let’s play go fish,” the twin on the potty suggested.

            “Great idea,” the oldest girl agreed.  “Where are the cards?”

            “They’ve got to be somewhere,” I said.  “Everyone off your perch to search for them.”

 

            The girls scattered.  We searched in the dinette drawers.  I rummaged through the bench seat storage compartments.  The girls dumped their backpacks and raked through the contents.

 

            We all returned to the dinette table, dripping and exhausted.  We sat, breathing heavily, allowing the fan to dry some sweat.  No one spoke.

 

            Once we regained our wind and cooled down slightly, I said, “The cards must be in the van.”

            The girls nodded in unison.  “Daddy has the van,” they said. 

            “It’s okay,” I told them.  “What else could we do?”

“How about drawing or coloring pictures,” my artist, one of the twins, suggested.

 

No one moved this time.

“I think I have colored pencils in my backpack,” the artist said.  She still didn’t move.

“No you don’t,” her twin countered.  “You…”

“Don’t tell me,” our second daughter said.  “You left them in the van.”

“Right.”  We all agreed.

 

Night was falling and a cacophony of insect noises ensued.  The only sound in the camper was the rotating fan.

 

“How about Hang the Man?”  One of the girls suggested.

 

Everyone sat there and thought, for it was too hot to exert ourselves again.

 

“Pencils and paper are in the van, too,” I said.

“Probably,” the girls agreed.

“Wait,” I said and stood up.  A smile crossed my sweaty face. 

 

The girls looked up with anticipation.

 

“Let’s go to the camp store and buy some ice cream.  I know the laundry money’s here.”  I turned to open the silverware drawer by the sink.

“I think I have some money, too,” the oldest piped up.

“Me, too,” said our second daughter.

“Bring it all to the table, girls,” I said as I lifted out the plastic silverware tray.  I heard coins plunking down on the dinette table behind me as I raked my fingers along the drawer bottom only to find 50 Canadian cents.  When I returned to the table, I saw pouty faces and 53 Canadian cents on the table.

 

“I must have done laundry recently,” I said.

“About two days ago,” my oldest reminded me.

I nodded and sighed.  “I guess the money’s in…”

“The van,” the girls said in unison.

 

I hated to see the girls so disappointed.  “We’ll all go to the camp store when the men returned,” I promised.

 

They nodded.

 

“But until then,” I said with a smile, “I’ll tell a story.”     

            Finally, smiles returned to their faces. 

 

Impromptu storytelling, especially when camping with the family—no outside distractions—can be fun.  Just as when entertaining the children on long road trips, the stories do not have to make sense.  This is a time to let your imagination soar.  If everyone would rather listen to one storyteller, as in my situation, take audience requests.  Allow the children to give the storyteller the plot details.  To enhance visualization, pepper the story with familiars that the audience knows.

The girls wanted to hear a romance between star-crossed lovers and a millennium dance.  Our romance story continued until the men returned in the van from their fishing expedition covered in mosquito bites.

 

While our son bubbled over about his adventures fishing, I placated my husband’s sour mood with a suggestion for the family to visit the camp store ice creamery.  The smile returned to his mosquito-bitten face only after most of his banana split was gone.   

Happy Easter, everybody!

A Walk on the Ocean Floor



Hopewell Rocks

            “How would you like to walk on the ocean floor and not get wet,” my husband asked the children one day when he returned from work. 

            “Oh cool,” our son piped up.

            “Yes, yes, Daddy,” the girls chorused. 

            The children were hopping up and down in the hallway, while I stood in stupor. 

            “Um.” I looked at my husband.  “Are we playing a game,” I asked.

            He shook his head.

            “Where are we going, Daddy,” our oldest asked.

            “To the Bay of Fundy,” he answered.

            “Is that an island,” our son asked.

            I‘m usually not this dense, I thought, but I’m lost.

            “It’s in New Brunswick, Canada,” he informed us.

            “Ah, next to Maine,” I said.

            “It has the highest tides in the world,” he told the children

            I exhaled.  No air tanks or wet suits required, I thought.  I’m safe. 

            Always remember to factor in time zone changes when planning a camping trip.  For New Brunswick, Canada, we lost an hour simply going through the customs booth.  The children didn’t care.  They pressed their noses against the van glass, watching the coast as we drove northward.      

            “Where’s the water, Dad,” the children asked in unison.

            “It will come back in,” he assured them.

            “But the boats are on the ground,” a twin said.

            “So are the docks,” the oldest said. 

            “Where do the fish go,” our fisherman worried.

            “They stay with the water,” I assured him.

            “Do the fishermen walk out on dry land to their boats and wait for the water to come back,” he asked.

            “Probably not,” his father said.

            When we next saw the sea at Hopewell Rocks, or the “flower pots” according to the locals, it had a brick red tint to it.  We puzzled over this phenomenon until we noticed the ocean swirling around the lopsided clay “pots.”  The conglomerate mud rock was red.  These “pots” seemed more like tiny islands forested with trees and shrubs to us.

            After lunch, we climbed down to traverse the ruddy seabed.  The pungent smell of brine filled our nostrils as the towering, shaggy, green-topped sculptures we saw from above loomed overhead.  The children clambered over the rubbery seaweed base to inspect the bits and pieces of shell and rock stuck to the spindles of the pots like mosaic works of art. 

            “Mom, look at this!” rang out from every direction as I tried to investigate the sea floor myself. 

            Crustaceous arches, layered, craggy seawalls and red cliffs attracted our attention for more than an hour.  We trekked farther down the coast to find slabs of bleached rock littering the beaches.  The red cliffs dressed in thick forested caps, appeared like regiments of buzzed hair cut soldiers from a distance.

            As soon as we rounded the bend in the coast, I spotted them.

            “Oh no,” I told my husband.

            Then he looked up.  But before we could turn around the children had found them too.

            “Boulders,” they cheered and ran toward them. 

“I don’t know what the fascination is,” my husband said as he pulled up a nice, comfortable sun-baked slab of rock for us to sit on.

“At least it tires them out,” I said, sitting on the slab.  “It’s their vacation too.”    

For the next hour, we watched our beloved children scamper all over the scattered boulders on the beach in front of us, thankful for the rest. 

Cabin Fever

During the long, bleak winter months in New Jersey when we don’t get any snow, my family pines for the lazy days of summer and our family camping trips.  So we devised a way to remember the warmth of those summer camping adventures.  What we do is plan a dinner and a movie night, camp style.   

We have a fireplace in our family room.  The children and I prepare roast able foods like cubed carrots, broccoli, or cauliflower and chicken, steak, or hot dogs and put them in separate plastic bowels.  Then my husband starts a small fire in the grate.  We all sit on the floor in front of the fireplace and use our long camping skewers to roast one piece of food at a time.  As we allow the food to cool a little before eating it, we talk about all the fun things that we had done on our most recent camping adventure in the summertime.  We finish our meal by toasting marshmallows for s’mores, remembering the graham crackers and chocolate.

After we are finished eating, my husband closes the glass doors to the fireplace and we clean up.  Then we turn on our favorite family movie.   

How about you?  Do you have any ideas for whiling away those long winter months with the family?    

A Quiet Drive for the Holiday: Child Occupation in the Car Part II

A parent is always a teacher to her children.  As the children became older, I would take a subject that one of the older children was learning in school and write about it on a pad of paper.  This can be anything from all you know about frogs to poetry and geography.  Then beginning with the youngest, each participant wrote one fact he or she knew about the subject and passed the paper on to the next person.  Or a person could write one line of a rhyming poem and then pass it on, the only rule being that the poem had to rhyme not necessarily make sense.  At the close of the day’s driving, we would share our creation with the family.  This can become quite comical. 

Try bringing along a small tape recorder [and lots of batteries].  The first person can pose a question or record a sound and the recipient needs to answer the question or guess the sound.  A story can be created this way with someone starting the story and the next person continues the story thread.  Just like the poem, the story does not have to make sense, just continue to build.  Then listen to it at the end of the drive.  [This particular parent is also a creative writer…can you tell?]

 

We have mixed and matched these ideas over the years, and because of them, we have crisscrossed the United States and have even visited some of the northeastern provinces of Canada and made it all the way out to Newfoundland.

A Quiet Drive for the Holiday: Child Occupation in the Car Part I

            My family and I go camping every summer.  The key to our success camping with five children, beginning when our youngest, twins, were four years old, was to keep the children occupied during the long—long!—car rides.  The reason we go camping in the first place is to find quiet time away from the rush, rush of life.  I wanted to leave the television, computer, and video games home and give the children a chance to use their imaginations.  But first, I had to use mine. 

If you are like me, it seems that every few years the children “need” a newer character lunchbox.  Well, don’t throw away the old plastic lunchboxes.  They are ideal for travel occupation.  They store well and keep small parts together.  Of course, it is important to make the lunchboxes age appropriate.  You need at least one lunch box per child, and depending on the length of the trip, bring a few extra packed lunch boxes.  What you pack in them depends on what’s in the toy chest or what your children like to do. 

 

You are looking for smaller, imaginative-play type toys, like Barbie dolls, G.I. Joes, Match Box cars, rubber creatures and Beanie Babies.  Then stretch your imagination, and subsequently the children’s, by including a wooden-shaped block or a plastic donut-type ring or a large paste jewel or a finger ring, perhaps a colored feather or ribbon.  These eclectic objects will spark the children’s creative play on a small scale as the miles roll by.  Don’t forget Etch A Sketches, story picture books, listening tapes, and sharpened pencils and pads of paper for tic-tac-toe and hang the man.

            I would pack each lunch box differently and exchange boxes often to keep interests peaked.  Sometimes I would give each lunchbox a theme, like sports with sports cards and figurines or aquatic with underwater creatures and boats.  Make the play interactive and practice communication skills by writing notes to each other and passing them along via “child mail” to the recipient.  Tic-tac-toe and hang man can work this way also.

The Future Enjoyment of National Parks

The climb to Balcony House, Mesa Verde
 

National Parks are the needed peace in a busy world.  The National Parks System brings education and family togetherness as well as providing recreation for all.  I know my family and I would be lost without them.    

I recently read a blog entry entitled WhoShould Be Allowed to Purchase Privately Owned Lands in National Parks? about private individuals living inside National Park boundaries wishing to sell their properties.  This is an issue worth talking about. 

Of course, any private property does belong to those individuals and they have rights here in the United States of America.  They have a right to receive an accurate offer of the land’s value from the government.  They have a right to sell their home/land to another private individual.  However, I believe commercialization of the land should be avoided at all costs.  Perhaps a clause could be introduced to prohibit further commercialization of land within the National Park boundaries. 

The reason why these lands are so precious is because in their beauty they provide an escape from the rush-rush of life.  What do you think?