First Camping Trip

July 4th weekend was our first camping trip with my 22-month old. Only having backpacked before Scarlett was born, I knew that car-camping would be luxurious compared to the type of camping I'm used to. But we have Scarlett this time. So I consulted my mommy friends who've gone camping recently with their toddlers for any tips/advice. The tips I got was to pack lots of things for Scarlett to do, and pack lots of snack foods, because she will probably not eat well during meals and end up snacking all day. So I prepared: I packed crayons, drawing paper, sticker book, reading books, and her shovel and bucket. I packed raisins, crackers, cheerios, cheese sticks, cut-up fruits, applesauce, etc. for her to snack on. We brought her pack n'play and my husband's down jacket for her to use as a "sleeping bag". So off we went to Big Basin Redwoods for our first family camping trip with my husband's parents, who were kind enough (and smart enough) to have booked us a camp-site way back in January.


Camping turned out to be the "most relaxing, unstressful vacation we've ever taken," according to my husband. We did hardly anything besides sitting around most of the time and watching Scarlett in amusement. Scarlett loved the campground, playing with the dirt, rake, sticks, and whatever seemed interesting to her. She barely played with the stuff I brought to entertain her. She just loved being outside all the time. She ate pretty well too and didn't eat too much of her snacks. Aside from being up for 2 hours before falling asleep due to other campers around us being loud, she slept fairly well. It helped that she slept in the camping trailer with grandma instead of sleeping in our tent but she didn't wake up in the middle of the night and slept in past 7am every morning. Even Chloe, our greyhound, was ok. I thought she would be miserable during the camping trip. After the initial whining and freezing the first night, she seemed fairly content laying around the campsite.
With that kind of experience, we'll definitely have to go camping with her again. We'll just have to make sure we bring grandma and grandpa along every time!