Welcome to my series on the joys of family camping. In this series I’ll remember my own childhood to help you understand why I think that family camping is the best family building experience on earth. My family started camping when I was 13 years old and in the 39 years since then, I’ve had some great family experiences while camping. In the process, I’ll turn you on to some great places to go camping and help you make a list of the basic gear you’ll need.

One of my favorite parts of a family camping trip is the chance to experience nature up close and personally. The first example of this in my life was on our very first family camping trip. It was the summer of 1969 and my dad decided that we would try camping for our summer vacation. Dad decided we were going to visit Assateague Island National Seashore and see the wild ponies. Imagine how neat it was for my sister, brother and I (aged 4, 10 and 13 respectively) to see those ponies running around in nature. Sure, we could have stayed at a motel and driven to see the ponies, but it just wouldn’t have been the same as waking 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 seen while camping are wild moose in Maine, a spectacular monarch butterfly migration in Long Island (yes you really can go camping in Long Island), dozens of hawks and bald eagles near Harrisburg, PA, a migration of tiny frogs in South Carolina and dozens of deer in one evening on Virginia’s Skyline Drive. All of these trips have etched memories for a lifetime into my mind. I only wish the quality of cameras was better when I was a kid. 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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This entry was posted on Friday, July 24th, 2009 at 3:01 pm and is filed under camping advice. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.