Works For Me--Camping With Small Children

People are sometimes surprised that Tom and I tent camp with small children. Well, we tent camped before we met, after we met, after we were married, and now we've tent camped with one, two, and three young children.

I won't say it's easy...camping never is. But if you have low expectations of what you're going to get done on the camping trip, and do a little planning in advance, you can have a fun family adventure that you'll remember forever. If you haven't seen pictures of our trip last week to Joshua Tree, or read Tom's story about a funny neighbor, check them out and see how much fun we had!

Here are some of the tips we've developed after camping with small children over the past four years (and a combined 60 years of camping experience between us):

Setting up camp. Make sure to arrive several hours before the sun sets. Figure out in advance how you're going to contain your baby and/or toddler while you set up camp, so both parents can set up camp quickly. When we just had Lukas, we brought a PackNPlay for him to play in while we set up camp, to take naps in outside during the day (inside the tent is too hot during the day), and to sleep in at night. Now with three, we don't have space for a PackNPlay, but Natalie is crawling into everything, so we brought our old 3-man tent for Lukas and Natalie to play in. Konrad was in his portable bouncy seat, and everyone was happy.

Location of campsite. We never opt for a site close to the bathrooms (too much traffic and smell) but we try to be considerate of others regarding where we do set up, knowing that our children will make more noise than most adult campers (although we do have a story that will live in infamy in our family--Lukas' second camping trip--where we had the most noisy and obnoxious neighbors ever).

Food. I always cook from scratch at home, and I also love car camping (compared to backpacking) because you can eat so much better (ok, you also don't have to carry anything on your back!) But I've learned to sacrifice gourmet cooking for simplicity while camping with young kids. The key to camping with young kids is speed and simplicity. This means I use Hamburger Helper. Ok, don't fall over in shock. The only time I use Hamburger Helper is while camping. I also cook as many things as possible at home before we go. So I fried the hamburger at home, put it in a ziploc bag, and froze it so it would stay colder longer in the cooler. For breakfast, I had undercooked the bacon and made pancakes at home, so I just warmed up the bacon (made eggs in the little bit of grease that came out of the bacon as it became crisp) and warmed up the pancakes at the camp site. I also use canned vegetables instead of frozen while camping: the canned vegetables are already in water. I just dump them in a pot and heat them up. For dinner, that's only two pots to clean: the Hamburger Helper pot and the vegetable pot, and no grease to get rid of. It's major time saving for making dinner out in the open to have things cooked as much in advance as possible, and it saves on cleanup (no pancake batter bowl to clean because I already made the pancakes at home). I have also made dishes (stew, chili, etc.) at home, frozen them, and reheated them at the campsite, but I've found we all enjoy a "new" flavor while camping, and since I don't use Hamburger Helper any other time, it provides new flavors for us. We usually just make sandwiches for lunch.

S'mores. If you bring S'mores, the kids will forget anything (bad) that happens with the dinner.

Wipes. You can't have too many baby wipes while camping with kids. Besides the normal use for them, we use them to wash hands that have been playing in the dirt, wash faces, wipe off sticky messes, basically to give baths. Bring lots of plastic grocery bags to dispose of the wipes and dirty diapers.

Bedding. No matter what time of year or what elevation you're camping, it's going to be colder at night than your child's bedroom, so it's important to make sure you have bedding for the kids that will keep them warm. Trust me: you'll sleep better, and so will they if you do not worry about how warm they are. Tom and I love the child-sized Nebo Zero-Degree Bags and you can't beat the price at $20. Natalie and Lukas each have one, and Konrad will inherit Lukas' when we buy a new full-size bag for Lukas. The kids are always warm, they don't wake up at night, and we don't worry.

Naps. Think in advance how your kids are going to have naps. As I mentioned, if your tent is at all in the sun during the day, it will be too hot for naps (unless you're camping in the winter, which we haven't done with kids). Our solution has been to do our big activity for the day in the morning, have lunch, then pile the kids in the car for a one-hour drive somewhere so they can nap in air conditioned comfort. If you switch drivers after an hour, one adult can nap on the way there, and the other on the way back.

Taking down the camp. This is basically a reverse of setting up: put the baby and/or toddler in the containment vessel while you pack everything. Last thing to be packed is the baby and the containment vessel.

Mistakes will happen. No matter how much you plan, something will go "wrong"! But it's the silly things we do that help us to remember some camping trips. Like this last trip, I forgot floppy hats for the kids and sunscreen. I dug around and found an old stick of sunscreen that we all put on our faces and arms, and I used a hat intended for warmth at night to protect Konrad's bare head, and we were fine.

So that's what works for us, and we have a lot of fun doing it. If you've camped with kids, and have additional ideas I didn't include, I'd love to hear them! Click here to check out my other works for me Wednesday posts.