Camping is fun, but if you want to make it in-tents (get it?), take all your friends and their kids with you! Bunchland contributor Kessa and Bunch creative director Rebecca Brown are part of a close-knit group of kids and parents who stay bonded though their annual camping trip.
Keep reading and they’ll let you in on the secrets of their tradition, which include a MacGyvered bouncy house, an inter-tent mail system and a child-minding strategy that allows the grownups time to drink beer around a crackling fire.
The pre-planning
The leadup to the big trip usually starts a few months in advance, with the first order of business: booking your campsite. Don’t sleep on this crucial detail, the popular sites fill up fast! Shoot emails back and forth and circulate a shared document (such as a Google doc) where families sign up for cooking and other duties and compare checklists of what to bring, who has what allergies or food preferences and which families have extra flashlights and folding chairs.
Setting up
Part of the fun of camping is creating your own temporary civilization in the woods. As masters of playing “house,” kids really get this, but it’s fun for grownups too. Set up a dining area and a cooking spot, and once you’ve got the practical stuff sorted, get creative.
Kids zone
Transform a tent into a “bouncy castle” by lining the ground with air mattresses and letting the kids bounce around inside to their hearts’ content.
Camping mail
A quick ‘n easy first-day craft is getting the kids to create family tent signs and mailboxes out of cardboard boxes, garden stakes, markers and duct tape. When things get wild you can mellow them out by getting them to write and deliver letters to each other.
Campfire food
Rotate meal prep and clean-up responsibilities (this is where having a schedule in place beforehand comes in). Put families on breakfast and dinner duty, and let everyone improvise snacks and lunch. (Note that leftover pancakes make excellent bread substitutes in a PB&J.) You can even engage in some friendly inter-family competition to see who can make the best meal. No one wants to eat weiners and beans every night, and some friendly one-upmanship will really raise the bar.
Cocktail hour
Sharing child-minding duties affords each couple time to take a romantic hike or go for a swim in a secluded part of the lake. Knowing that other sets of eyes are on your kids at all times will help you chill out for the duration of the weekend. And carving out some time for a daily “cocktail hour” with a signature drink gives the adults a break (and a chance to play bartender).
Bedtime stories
Get each kid to bring a couple of favourite books up, and store the collective stash in a Rubbermaid bin to create a campsite library. A communal bedtime story with milk and cookies under the stars is a pretty nice thing.
Campfires
Arrange the tents in a circle with the entranceways facing the campfire pit in the middle. That way grownups can hangout around the campfire at night while keeping the kids safe. Campfire songs, marshmallow roasting and the telling of ghost stories are a must, but make the kids go to bed at an agreed-upon time. Then the grownups can own the campfire, roast a batch more s’mores, get sloppy drunk and sing folk songs until the wee hours of the morning.
Bunchland-approved camping gear
Tent made with recycled materials, $449.95. Sleeping bag, $26.95. Solar-powered radio, $17.95. Marshmallow Tree, $12.50. Natural bug spray, $8.87. Compact butane stove, $22.50. Vintage copy of The Golden Book of Camping.
