Camping Part I: The Prep

My children and my husband love camping.  I think that the three of them would live at a campground like a weird combination of nomads and homeless people and not even feel sad about it.  My kids are your typical toddlers and LOVE getting dirty and picking up sticks and rocks and Lord only knows what.  The picture to the left shows Silas's last camping trip so I was excited to see how he reacted this time.  I will admit that now that he can walk, camping is a bit more enjoyable for everyone because he has something to do.  He is awake about 7 total hours during the day and walks about 6 hours and 45 minutes of that time so he is content just walking around.  Plus, he gets to be completely dirty and doesn't have to take a bath, etc.  Camping is his deal. 


 My daughter is a hoarder at the tender age of two.  If you saw anything at our house in her areas then you would fully understand what I am talking about.  She has, at any moment, like 15 different toys, stuffed animals or random items in her crib that aren't blankets.  While we are camping she focuses on one item and picks up all of them that she can find.  The last trip that we made, pictured to the right, was to Dangerfield State Park and she collected pine cones.  She has probably 20 of the miniature ones in our garage right now and we found some of them that she stowed away in our camper when we unpacked the chairs this time.  This time it was a little bit of everything - sticks, firewood, rocks, charcoal pieces from the fire circle, etc.      

We decided at the end of the week that we were going to go camping for one night with my parents at a local campground.  Let me admit that I am not a camper.  We camped like 4 million times as Girl Scouts growing up and to say that I am burned out on camping for life is an understatement.  Most of the time that we camped as Girl Scouts it was in tents or shelters, so I will agree that our style of camping now is a bit different.  Rarely do we not have some sort of media available and we have heat and/or A/C readily available.  I don't hate it as much as I used to but the majority of the time that I agree to go it's because I know that they love it so much.   

A camping trip takes a lot of preparation.  That statement is SO ridiculous on so many levels because camping, in itself, is meant to be a relaxing vacation.  Why would it take so much work?  And this is not just me saying that it takes prep because I am in love with making lists, Type A personality, etc.  It could be because I have two children under three and EVERYTHING takes a lot of prep work.  Hell, it even takes me more than 30-45 minutes to leave the house to go anywhere with the two kids. 

We got an awesome deal on a travel trailer last year, so that takes some of the prep work out of the equation totally, since you always know that you have somewhere to stay.  We were only looking for a few weeks and ended up with something that we really enjoy.  We knew that we wanted a fold out couch, and bunk beds in the back for guests or our teenagers or whoever wanted to put up with our sleeping habits while camping.  We ended up with a Jayco Jayflight 27BH.  Our first camping trip on the right - floor plan below.     

To help with the preparation, we leave a lot of items in our camper so we don't have to worry about
re-packing those anytime that we go.  For a list of those items see below.  The idea was to get to the point that we just had to bring clothes and food and were ready to go for that trip.  We are close to that, which will take a lot of stress off of me.  I am a chronic over packer of clothes.  I am always worried that I won't have enough clothes for me or my children.  I usually lay out clothes for my husband and he inevitably puts back about half of what I lay out for him.  I would rather have too much than not enough.  This applies to food as well.  We usually bring back more than half of what we packed to eat.  Even though we usually get combined meals with my parents or my sister and her husband, we still plan more than we eat for some reason.  One of my goals is to lessen the amount of food that we return with because it isn't often that we incorporate that food back into our regular eating for that week and it ends up going bad. 

List of items that remain in our camper year round:

• Sheets, pillowcases, blankets for all beds - washed and replaced after every trip
• Pillows for all beds
• Toiletries including toothbrushes, toothpaste, body wash, hand soap, hair ties, deodorant, shampoo, conditioner, etc
• Wash clothes, bath towels, hand towels and kitchen towels
• Bag for dirty clothes - washed and replaced after every trip
• Toilet paper appropriate for campers - different than just regular toilet paper for your home
• First aid kit - restocked and replaced after every trip
• Radio
• Art supplies (for kids)
• Random age appropriate toys
• Booster seat
• Cleaning supplies, paper towels,
• Cooking spray, paper plates, plastic ware, plastic cups
• Cheap pots and pans
• Random kitchen supplies - cutting board, sharp knives, can opener, oven mitt, etc

Tomorrow I will cover a second post: Camping - the good, the bad and the injured. 

-Sara