Why Go Camping?
Some people think camping is all about being dirty, having hundreds of bugs swarming you, sleepless nights, and sweaty days. It doesn’t sound fun at all. But camping (with the proper equipment and information) can be some of the best memories you will ever have with your family and friends.
Camping is cheap
Camping is a great way to save money. Camping on vacation (or as your vacation!) saves money that would have been spent on an expensive hotel room. Campsites generally cost a fraction of the cost of a hotel. Some are even free!
Visit Recreation.gov to find campsites in your favorite vacation destinations.
Camping promotes family
Camping is a family building experience. Getting out in the backwoods or backyard brings the family together because the distractions of a fast-paced environment are lessened. Avoid bringing all your “devices” with you. In fact, you don’t really need toys of any kind! You will be surprised at how quickly your children adapt to playing with sticks and rocks, pinecones and dandelions!
Camping also offers the opportunity to teach family teamwork. Whether it is putting up a tent or cooking over a campfire you built together, your family is working together, learning from each other, and enjoying fellowship that is difficult to find in our fast-paced world.
And while you’re out there in the wilderness (or backyard), why not play a family game?
Visit UltimateCampResource.com for game ideas or pull out one of our favorite family games – UNO.
(affiliate link)
To play UNO with all ages, play with the cards face up and the olders help the youngers. It’s shocking how often a little one will win even though you know exactly what they have in their hand!
Camping builds lifelong skills
Pitch a tent for a man and he will camp for the night, teach a man how to pitch a tent and he will camp for a lifetime.
~RaisingAdventure.com
Camping is a learning experience that will stick with your children for the rest of their lives. They WILL remember these days, and their memories will have nothing to do with how perfect of an experience it was. In fact, some of our best camping stories are the ones where EVERYTHING went wrong! But, we learned from those experiences!
We will be sharing more camping resources, ideas, gear, and destinations in upcoming posts here on Raising Adventure! Until then, check out this wonderful ebook, The Family Camping Handbook. It is full of down to earth camping advice, as well as healthy camp food recipes. This is one of our favorite Camping Rookie Resources!
4 Replies to “Why Go Camping?”
Thanks for this post! I’m definitely looking forward to your recommendations in the future.
We have 7 children, and are living on 400 acres in Washington. However, because we have a child with severe special needs, it wasn’t until last summer when we first took the plunge to take the kids camping, in a small tent we found at a garage sale. Definitely in the market for a bigger one next year!
We decided just to stay in the yard at first, and while it is a challenge, the other kids loved it SO much. So we will keep trying, and hopefully can venture out to the rest of the property, and maybe even beyond the safety net of home in the years to come.
Lisa,
Camping out in the yard is a great place to gain the necessary skills to journey beyond and/or simply enjoy the time spent together. If you never make it beyond your property, you still have the memories!
Big fan of Amy and Raising Arrows. Just popped over. How do you begin camping? We have seven children and live in the St. Louis area. How do you go camping with a baby? The sleeping? Also, any advice when one parent is more practical and concerned with children getting to bed at a decent hour on a regular basis and keeping up with bath night and all those details, and one parent would like to be more spontaneous, make memories, see things and experience things and basically have adventures???
Great questions! Friends of ours always take an air mattress for them and baby. Some people get a tent that will accommodate a playpen for baby. I’ll work on a post that will address many of these questions!