"Real" camping is a lot of work so when our friends invited us to go "glamour-camping" (aka glamping) at their membership-only campground where there are hot showers, flushing toilets, a pool, and a games room...we were all in. It is still an insane amount of work to find all our camping gear from the depths of our basement and driving east bound on a Friday towards Cultus Lake took way too long but once we got there, the rest of the weekend was glorious.
These are the things I love most about camping with good friends:
Campfires: there are some important life skills like swimming or riding a bike and another life skill is perfecting the art of roasting a hot dog or a marshmallow without burning it or having it entirely engulfed in flames. The kids thoroughly enjoyed the opportunity to perfect the art of making and eating the perfect s'more...
The other great part about camping with good friends is when it's 10:00 pm finally dark enough to attempt to put your kids to bed, there's the incentive of getting them to sleep quickly so you can meet back by the campfire for a couple hours (unless you fall asleep while you are putting them down)
Freedom: I think I have mentioned this before but some strange parenting phenomenon happens when you're camping. When we are home, I would never let my kids cross the street unsupervised or play at the playground without me there but when we're camping, as long as the kids have a buddy with them, it is perfectly acceptable to let your little ones go free to traipse and frolic in the woods as they please. You want to go play at the playground ? OK - go with a friend.You want to play flashlight tag? Ok - go with your friends. You want to go in the forest and find fairies? Sure - go with a friend. I don't know about you, but this mama is tired so the fact that the kids all play nicely together and show up eventually back at the campsite when they are hungry is so glorious.
It takes a village: I also love the co-parenting aspect of camping with friends. If some of the kids want to play at the playground, and some of the kids want to go throw rocks in the creek and the rest to go swimming, there's enough parents to go around that everyone can be happy (including the parents).
I don't particularly love public pools so I'm grateful that there's always one parent that is happy to be in the pool with all the kids while the rest of us chill on the pool deck.
Collaborative cooking- meal planning and cooking can be so exhausting...I cook 7 days a week so anytime I don't have to cook is welcome break. We pre-planned and coordinated for all our meals so each family just brought a few ingredients to contribute to each meal. No one had to spend a long time cooking and everything was simple and delicious.
Togetherness - One of the best parts of camping is being in a tent altogether with your family. I love it as much as my kids do. It's such a novelty to have a family sleepover and now that they aren't toddlers and don't wake up at 4:30 am at the crack of dawn, I enjoy the morning cuddles even more.
This summer, we'll be attempting our first backpacking overnight camping trip with these two, I'm a little apprehensive because we can easily fill the back of our pickup truck for a weekend camping trip and I don't know if the kids can carry more than their water bottles and their stuffed dragons. It sure won't be as refreshing as glamping with our friends but I'm always up for another adventure...
