The Best and the Worst of Family Camping

After twenty years of tenting

We’ve been camping for years. We’ve never had a trailer — just a tent. Making it the largest tent we could find once our family expanded.

All four of our children are big fans. Throughout the cold season, they are whining regularly that they can’t wait to go camping again. During the pandemic, we camped more than usual — where else would we go?

Here is our list of camping highlights and the worst nightmares.

The worst:

1. Hearing an animal walking around your tent at night and not knowing what it is (and whether it is real.)

2. Arriving at a campground just as it starts raining while you need to set up your tent.

3. Having to set up a tent in full sun during scorching weather.

4. An onslaught of mosquitos after you realized you forgot to bring insect spray.

5. Caterpillars dropping into your food.

6. Waking up hurting all over after your mattress has quietly deflated during the night.

7. Discovering that the campground is under a full fire ban when all the food you brought has to be cooked over the fire.

8. A blaring deafening car alarm that goes off at the next site while its owners are somewhere paddling.

9. Having to pack up and leave in twenty minutes because you missed the storm warning, and your tent is trying to lift off.

10. A lightning storm and pouring rain at night, as you sit inside and hold the tent seams.

The best:

1. Fragrant forest air.

2. Going to sleep listening to the wind in the branches and waking up to the birds.

3. Walking around at night and seeing your lantern reflect on the dark trees above.

4. Watching the fireflies.

5. Sitting around the crackling fire, with the heat in your face and coolness on your back.

6. Foodstuff charred over the hot coals.

7. Sharing the space with other living things — chipmunks, frogs, and deer. And raccoons too, although they are more annoying than endearing.

8. Getting into a hammock and just looking up into the sky.

9. Whispering stories with kids in the darkness of the night.

10. The slow and quiet passage of time.