For a parent who has a love of the great outdoors, it’s almost inevitable that camping holidays will be planned once your kids are old enough. However, depening on the age of the kids, there are some possible pitfalls and adapting to failed plans or weather changes might not be quite as straightforward as when it’s just you. Here we have a couple of suggestions to consider before setting off on your first (hopefully the first of many) family camping trip.
Planning out your camping menu is a lot easier than it used to be – there is such a variety of family sized camping stoves available today that it’s become easy to cook much of what you cook at home and have great results. Choosing food that will pack and store well is still a concern but if you’re car-camping is easy reach of shops then you really don’t have much to worry about. The probems begin when your fussiest eater realizes that their favourite meal is off the cards for the week, or your most squeamish sees a bug land in her food. The trick is, as with most things, to make cooking the food part of the adventure and make sure you have some familier food occasionally. BBQ style burgers and sausages are always acceptable and dehydrated camping packs can be passed off as ‘astronaut food’.
The other big difference that might cause problems on a first camping trip is the lack of space/privacy (depending on the age of the children) in the tent. Complaints of ‘her stuff is in my space’ or ‘I’m not sharing with him, he kicks’ will soon be resouding around the campsite if you try to cram the whole family into the two or three man tent that has served you so well in the past. If you have no space restrictions then it pays to invest in a larger tent than you think you need – an eight person tent should suit for a family of four or more. This will give everyone some space, solve the problem, if it is a problem, of shared sleeping arrangements, and leave lots of space for games and/or cooking inside if the weather turns bad during the vacation.
Have a back-up plan for entertainment (board or card games are good) and pack a frst aid kit and a sense of humor and you might have the beginnings of the perfect family bonding time. Get it wrong and you’ll be blamed for months to come!