Family Camping Fun

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Welcome to my series on the joys of family camping. In this series I’ll draw on my own childhood to help you learn why I think that camping is a great family experience. My family discovered camping when I was 13 years old and in the almost 40 years that followed, I’ve had some tremendous family experiences on camping trips. In the process, I’ll turn you on to some great places to camp and help you make a list of the basic gear you’ll need.

One of my favorite parts of a family camping trip is the chance to experience nature up close and personally. The first example of this in my life was on our very first family camping vacation. It was June of 1969 and my dad decided that we would try camping for our summer vacation. Dad decided we were going to visit Ocean City, Maryland and see the wild ponies at Assateague Island National Seashore. Imagine how neat it was for my sister, brother and I (aged 4, 10 and 13 respectively) to see those ponies running around in nature. Sure, we could have stayed at a motel and driven to see the ponies, but it simply wouldn’t have been the same as getting up, getting out of our camping tent, packing our picnic basket and then walking to where we could see the ponies. It felt to me like we were part of the ponies’ world rather than intruders into their world.

Among the spectacular wildlife I’ve encountered while camping are wild moose in Maine, a spectacular monarch butterfly migration in Long Island (yes you really can go camping in Long Island), dozens of hawks and bald eagles near Harrisburg, PA, thousands of tiny frogs in South Carolina and hundreds of deer in one day on the Skyline Drive in Virginia. All of these trips have left me with memories for a lifetime. I only wish the quality of cameras was better when I was a child. That reminds me, don’t forget to take your camera on your next camping trip and when you go, please, please take nothing but pictures and leave nothing but footprints.

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