For me, that is easy to answer because I never went camping as a child. I didn’t go on my first camping trip until I was married to my first husband. We didn’t even own a tent. We slept under the stars in sleeping bags, and cooked our meals right on the campfire using an iron skillet.
My children all went camping before they were a year old, and we took our oldest grandson camping in our popup when he was 8 months old. As a Girl Scout leader for 8 years, I took lots of girls on their very first camping trip. I even planned a camping trip for 125 people! We had great fun camping together at a Girl Scout Campground in the north Georgia Mountains over a 3 day weekend.
Mark you calendar for Tuesday, March 6 at 9:00 p.m. EST to join in a Live Chat at the KOA Campfire. The topic will be Family Fun While Camping. Get some fun ideas for making memories for your next camping trip!
I first camped in a boat when young, also with Girl Scouts.
I was literally born into camping in 1951. National forests out west were the destinations of choice back then. My family first started off camping in a tent, and when Grandma would go on trips with the five of us, my oldest brother slept on the back seat of the car, and my other brother and myself slept in the trunk of the car at night, with the grownups’ tent right against the back of the car! ha..Ice chests, sleeping bags, iron skillets, cardboard boxes to hold the cooking dishes and bread, etc., and a pump up Coleman stove were our luxury items. No tv’s or cell phones, but daddy always had a transistor radio with spare batteries to try and catch the weather reports. Our favorite thing to do was standing around a campfire talking, hiking, climbing rocks and mountainsides and watching for wildlife. After the ground tenting daddy made a ‘pop-up’ car top tent of sorts that opened out to a big bed in the middle for him and moma, and a smaller one on each outer side for us little guys. That was bolted as well as strapped to the top of the station wagon. Then along came a tiny travel trailer. When the three of us kids left home they went to a homemade camper van, and continued that until my dad passed away in 2009. There was over 350,000 miles on the last Dodge van when it was donated when dad passed, and that van was still running like a dream! Plain and simple camping, but I wouldn’t take a gold plated mega RV for the memories.
I forgot to mention that I just made it home and read your post that says your grandson has made it home. Wonderful! Being in your own beds will do wonders for the both of you. A ‘belated’ prayer of thanks will be said.