Going Camping

Growing up we camped. Some of my mom's best stories are around the camp trips we took... accidentally happening on the nude beach at Big Sur, horseback riding at Yellow Stone (apparently I cried the whole time), and going on a hike and ending up at the dump in upstate New York... Ahh good times.

So I decided that we should take our boys camping. With young kids the only choice is car camping.

Jonathan and I have only been car camping once since we got married. We went with graduate school friends to Bar Harbor, Maine. Our friend, an accomplished car camper, and a bit type A, planned every meal and packed enough food to last a month. We had different ideas, biking into town for lobster, buying fresh vegetables and meats at the local grocery store, playing it by ear -- at the end of the day we clashed a little, and it wasn't the best experience.

Still, we are fairly skilled campers. We are fully capable of backpacking into the wilderness, setting up a tent, cooking a serviceable dinner on a tiny stove, purifying our own water ... So how hard will it be to camp with small kids? We'll find out this weekend.

We are taking baby steps into the camping with kids experience.  For the last two weeks we have had the little tent set-up in the backyard (which the boys have been playing in). On Sunday for one night we have a campsite reserved at Big Basin Redwoods State Park, 23 minutes from our house.  On September 18 we are off to Los Pedres National Forest near Santa Barbara for two nights of camping. Depending on how everything goes, will either be happy campers, or not... I have a feeling that the boys will love it, and we will have another inexpensive way to travel with our kids.

In preparation for our first family camping adventure we needed a new tent. As much as I love our light weight two person tent, it just isn't big enough. I online shopped for a new 6 person tent, reading plenty of reviews and we settled on the Kelty Yellowstone. It was a good choice, it took me (I'm 5 feet 4 inches) twenty minutes to set-up in the back yard, and two minutes to take down.  We do have a full size Coleman camping stove from our 1994 car camping trip ... which is still in good shape. I also bought some additional lanterns, cooking supplies and mugs.

Everything is piled up in the backyard. From the picture you can see it is a mess. This afternoon I'll start packing it away for Sunday... Wish us a luck!