take my kids camping

One will love it, one will hate it. Mom won’t want to go at all. I haven’t been camping in about 25 years. Will have to give this some thought.

I have floated this idea, and my daughters are like “you have to be kidding. I want to hang with my friends.” I may table this until the spring and then invite a friend for each girl.

I’m going to start planning for that trip next summer with my wife and kids. I didn’t take my kids this year because they behaved very badly earlier this year. And I’m keeping my promise to them that if they misbehaved that I wouldn’t take them camping. They both have been behaving very well this remaining year. I’ll have to take them next year. I might have to rent a stupid cabin though. My wife is too much of a wussey to go camping the real way; in a tent.

We used to go camping all the time. Now the girls are getting older, 12 and 14, we haven’t gone in a while. I want to take the girls camping this month.

I take the kids camping at the beach in San Diego every year, huge family get together. But it doesnt count quite as much as the roughing it camping I had in mind. I took the 8 year old camping in the mountains last month for the first time. It was great! Campfire, nature, scary sounds, marshmallows. He got a little freaked out at night but ended up loving it.

My father took me to buzzards roost when I was a little kid and it was one of the most moving moments in my entire life. I know, romantic name: Buzzards Roost; but it’s remote and austere and the birds follow you. You can only reach it by bike so we used to rent some of those gigantic cruisers with the white walls. And then the birds would see us back to our campsite.

We pitched our tent in Hyde park just outside of Santa Fe. THe kids and I hiked to a small waterfalls and cooled off. My daughter screamed as a chipmunk chased her at the picnic table. I took a nap in a hammock and tryed to keep the flies off. Hiked down to the ranger station, who happens to be a friend and we had a great cook-out dinner before hiking back to the camp. That night I kept hearing noises and did not sleep very well. Turns out there was a bear in the next campground trying to get into the dumpster. I think the kids had a good time and will remember it forever.

Well the kids handled it pretty well, even though the place we went to was terrible. (See Bark River Campground: Worst Campground Ever for the full story.) They definitely want to go again, just someplace else next time.

We’re planning a camping trip with the kids in 2 weeks. It’s a campground with a pool and other ‘civilization’ amenities, which will probably be good for their first time.

If the ages of my girls were different, then I would probably say this is worth it (doing this by myself that is). This weekend’s camping trip was nice, but I was very stressed. It was hard to keep the girls entertained and hard to keep them from sibling fighting. Our tent was too small for the three of us and trying to get a 2 year to go to sleep in a tent was a nightmare. A couple of hours after she finally slept, she woke up soaking wet from a diaper that wouldn’t hold all that she put out. sigh

From that point, I quickly put her in one of my shirts and shared my sleeping bag with her. I ended up holding the sleeping bag over her most of the night while I put her bag over me to keep my exposed parts warm.

Although I think I could improve some things that would make camping life more bearable, it wouldn’t be enough to allow me to enjoy myself. I’m thinking that when my littlest one is a bit older that this will be worthwhile doing.