Welcome to my series on the joys of family camping. In this series I’ll draw on my own past to help you learn why I reckon that camping is the best family building experience on earth. My family started camping when I was 13 years ancient and in the nearly 40 years that followed, I’ve had some tremendous family experiences while camping. In the process, I’ll turn you on to some fantastic places to go camping and help you make a list of the basic equipment you’ll need.
One of my favorite parts of a family camping trip is the chance to experience nature in a really new way. The first example of this in my life was on our very first family camping trip. It was June of 1969 and my father chose that we would try camping for our summer vacation. Dad chose we were going to visit Assateague Island National Seashore and see the wild ponies. Imagine how special it was for my brother, sister and I (aged 4, 10 and 13 respectively) to see those ponies running around in nature. Yes, we could have stayed at a hotel 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 check out the ponies. It felt to me like we were part of the ponies’ environment rather than intruders into their environment.
Among the spectacular wildlife I’ve encountered while camping are wild moose in Maine, an incredible monarch butterfly migration in Long Island (yes you really can go camping in Long Island), dozens of hawks and bald eagles in Central Pennsylvania, thousands of tiny frogs near Myrtle Beach and dozens 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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