Camping with Kids
I used to be an avid camper, having seen much of Texas outdoors (which is pretty easy, since you can camp nine months out of the year, more if you can tolerate the heat). I’ve backpacked my way around the Rockies and even – gasp! – my first ever backpacking trip was solo, using borrowed gear. I started accumulating and had just about everything any survivalist would give his best wool socks for. I could even stow enough stuff in one backpack to last me for two weeks in the wild, including food. Then I became a parent.
The first thing to go was my very first tent, my own personal tent, the tent I wouldn’t even let my own husband pack up. I would fold that tent away so perfectly that it still has the factory creases in it. But camping with a baby requires more than approximately 12 square feet of real estate. We upgraded to what our camping friends quickly referred to as “the Manor.” Can we talk big? I’ve had smaller apartments than this thing. It has rooms. It went totally against my minimalist nature to pitch such a thing. But I’m telling you, when you camp with a 5 month-old and you use cloth diapers, being able to put those stinky things in another room is, well, for lack of a better word – priceless.
Once the tent got upgraded, it was a slippery slope to swap all my lightweight, tiny gear for the family-sized options. (Now, for those of you who don’t know me and my family, the three of us together could easily make one large man, so I’m sure our camping neighbors get a big kick out of us unfurling all this largesse). At dinner, instead of cooking over a stove the size of a Tiger mosquito, we now had the huge multi-burner model. We switched from inflatable pads to a queen-sized inflatable mattress. I hauled rugs with us so the “sitting room” was padded for her highness.
Was I nuts? Perhaps. But I quickly realized that being able to adapt can take the edge off a bad situation, not to mention make a camping trip much more comfortable. My husband and I have our share of those awful-in-the-moment camping stories that we now laugh over. By making it easier on us (if you don’t count the extra weight from all this junk) we now have a five year-old who thinks that camping is the neatest thing ever.
And my old backpacking tent? We still take it camping with us. It makes a really great playhouse.
Comments
Karen, this is so funny. You remind me of when we were living a long day's travel away from our families (in TX actually) and flying home for a weekend meant packing the equivalent of two steamer trunks plus all the requisite kid-crap. We always looked like we were leaving our own baby shower with the stroller, pack-n-play, car seats, favorite toys and books, and many many many tote bags and backpacks... always leaving a trail of cheerios and raisins throughout the carpeted airport. We had to move back east just to get away from the indignity of it all. Sometimes it is so not sexy to be a parent.
Posted by: Liesl Groberg | March 8, 2007 07:20 AM