Camping with kids
I want to go camping with our 20 month old. Is this too young? The place I want to go to has either car camping or 1/4 mile walk in to the site so it shouldn't be too big of a deal. Should we wait? If we go for it, anything special we should do/bring? Should we go for a night to break him in or a couple nights assuming he'll get used to it?
2 Answers
-
I think 20 months old is great. I think we took our son when he was just a bit younger than that. He loved being outside, loved it beyond all reason, and we had a great time too. "bring" some songs to sing around the fire.
The only caveat I'd have is - don't count on sleeping. For that reason, I'd suggest only staying a night... I bet he'd get used to it soon enough, but personally I couldn't bear to face too many nights on little sleep. Our son managed to roll and squirm and slide out of sleeping bag and wake up, not to mention not fall asleep in the first place because it was all such a grand adventure!
(As for what to bring, bring a dog! We don't have one, but camping with a dog and a small child just seems awesome! That, and songs, and marshmallows!)
-
We are bringing our almost 15-mo-old camping in a few weekends at Pinnacles. We're going to try a one-nighter, and if all goes well, we will try a multi-night adventure at Yosemite this summer. Have no idea yet how we're going to plan this, but we'll let you know what we find out!
Also, we have a dog, and although you can bring dogs to many camp sites, they often can't go on trails with you. So we're probably going to board him for our trips. : (
Kristie -- we tried our one-nighter at Pinnacles last weekend! Went with three other families, so there were four kids total -- ours (15-mo-old), two 9-mo-old's, and one 4-month-old. We all survived! I would say that many of the kids intermittently cried throughout the night, so it wasn't the most restful night, but we made it through and did a short hike the following day.
Oh, the hardest part of us was the drive there. Took us two hours to get there, and by the end, our son was squirming and crying in boredom.
But it can be done!
- Evelyn, Jun 14, 2010