My Family Camping Trip Report

“Last Wednesday, my wife and I got the crazy idea of throwing together a family camping trip to Monte Sano State Park, which is the state park next to Huntsville, Alabama. This would be my son's first real camping trip (other than a backyard adventure from last fall) and my daughter's second. So that evening, my wife and sat down and made a pretty definitive list of what we'd need, including gear, clothing, food, games, etc. Thursday, we went out and purchased the food items we'd need for the weekend, and in addition, a huge screen room I'd seen at Costco that week.

Friday, we planned to let my wife get all the gear together, and when I got home from work, leave for the campsite. I was unsure of exactly how late the country store (where you reserve campsites) would be open, so my wife volunteered to go up there while on another errand and secure a campsite for us, around noon.

It was a good thing she did, because when she got there, there were only about 4 campsites left! luckily for us, the one she got met all my criteria; it was a water/electricity site, and it was close to the bathhouse, in case of kids' midnight runs to go potty. Unfortunately, my wife was informed that simply posting our card on the site was not sufficient to hold it, and that we needed to get a tent on it quick, or someone could simply take it, and there's nothing the park could (or would) do about it if that happened. So my wife went home, got our tent, and went back up to the site to pitch it. After hearing this news, I realized that I would need to take off early and help out with the packing. So I went home, and started getting things ready to throw into the van.

When my wife got home, we started packing stuff up, and pretty well filled the van with our gear and food. We drove back up the mountain to the park, went to our site, and I re-pitched the tent with the folded tarp I use as a groundcloth under it. We set up everything else, then got to the business of fixing dinner.

Since I didn't want to rely on my skills as a fire starter to cook dinner, I basically fried the hot dogs in a skillet on our campstove. This worked pretty well, but for dessert (S'mores) a campfire would be required. My wife had dispatched our children to gather firewood for us, but as they were not very experienced firewood-gathers, and as there was a bit of poison ivy in the woods surrounding our campsite, I had to fill in for them.

The firewood was fairly wet, and I didn't have any really good kindling, so my first couple of attempts failed. But my wife reminded me that we had MatchLight charcoal, so I got two briquets out of the bag, and lit them in the middle of my damp kindling. This worked quite well. After a few minutes of fanning and blowing, I was able to build a small campfire, but large enough to toast marshmallows for the s'mores. We all had a couple of s'mores, and I smoked a small cigar, then it was time to get into the tent and get to sleep for the evening.

We packed up all of our food in the van, and changed for bed. It was at this point that my wife discovered that she had forgotten her own pajamas. I loaned her a long-sleeve shirt that I usually sleep in while camping, and this worked well enough. We climbed into the tent and settled down for the night, and after a couple of minutes of convincing my son to calm down and go to sleep, we drifted off.

It was not to last, however, as I was awakened at about 1:00AM by the sound of one of our tablecloth clips being sprung off the table. I unzipped the window cover of the door of the tent, and shined my flashlight towards the picnic table. There, shining in the darkness were the closely-spaced eyes of an opossum, who was raiding the garbage bag we had left clipped to the picnic table. I got out of the tent, which scared him off, and I moved the garbage bag into the van, then got back into the tent and went back to sleep.

My daughter, who we have trouble motivating to get out of bed at 6:30AM on a schoolday, woke up at 5:45AM Saturday morning. About 45 minutes later, we all got up, and I began fixing a breakfast of link sausages and scrambled eggs. After eating this delicious morning meal, we got dressed for the activities of the day.

We started by hiking over to the park's picnic area, where there is a small waterfall that can be viewed by walking a short way down one of the hiking trails in the park. We helped the children down this trail, got a good look and a couple of pictures of the waterfall, then went back up the trail and over to the playground. The kids played for a little while, then we walked back to our campsite.

Then, we decided to drive back home for a quick visit to get my wife's pj's, some aluminum foil, and a couple of
other odds and ends we had forgotten. When we got back from this trip, my wife and I put up the new screen room while the kids played at the small playground in the campground. We ate lunch after this, then I took a nap in my folding chair while my family played a board game.

After my refreshing nap in the shade and bug-free air of our screen room, we went on a short hike. Very short, mostly because neither of my kids are used to long hikes, so we went about a mile up one trail, then cut back towards the campground on another. Unfortunately, my daughter fell and scraped her knee on a rock, and this caused her to complain and limp the rest of the way back to the campground. She wasn't seriously hurt, but the child reacts to any injury as if she has been a victim of Jason Voorhees. Her agony was quickly assuaged by the proper application of Bactine and a Band-Aid when we got back to the campground.

It was now approaching dinnertime, so I pulled the steaks out of the cooler, and lit the charcoal to grill them on in the firering at the campsite. The firerings at the park have grills that can be flipped back onto the ground, or over the fire, depending on whether or not one wishes to use them. The only real problem with this is that the grill can be very high over the charcoal, as much as 8-10 inches, which can make it difficult to grill over a small amount of charcoal. Also, the grill itself is made from a large amount of heavy-gauge steel, so it's also difficult to get the grill itself hot.

The upshot of this is that it took me a lot longer to grill the steaks than it took my wife to fry up the hash browns that we were going to have with them. Finally, something that I had learned the previous weekend at Trail Days clicked in my head, and I used some of the aluminum foil to make a tent to place over the steaks to trap and re-radiate some of the heat from the charcoal that was previously being wasted into the air. This had an immediate effect, and the steaks began cooking much faster after this simple change.

We ate our dinner, which was still delicious despite the time it took me to fix it, and then I build another campfire over the charcoal to roast marshmallows for more s'mores. My children had noticed that there were some kids at the campsite across from ours, and being much more social than myself and my wife, they invited them over to our campsite to join in the fun. They came over, had s'mores, and played a boardgame by the light of my Coleman lantern while I smoked another cigar. Their parents came over an hour or so later with their youngest child, and we exchanged pleasantries for 15 minutes or so, then went back to their own campsite.

After the previous night's experience, we were careful to pack all the food and garbage into the van before retiring to the tent. My wife also decided to give both children a Benadryl, and put them to bed 30 minutes before we turned in. This worked pretty good, and they were both asleep when we crawled into the tent to sleep.

The next morning, my wife and I were awakened by the sound of raindrops splattering against the fly of our tent. We made an immediate decision to pack up everything and leave, since we were going to do so that morning anyway, and in about 45 minutes we had everything packed up and in the van, ready to leave. We went home, and I fixed breakfast there instead of at camp. It didn't really rain hard until about 11:45 that morning, so we had packed up early, but it was a good weekend anyway.

We did pretty good for our first family camping trip. We only forgot a few things, and the experience went very well. I imagine that we'll be camping again soon, maybe a little further from home this time.”

“Great trip report! Sounds like you guys had fun. I can't wait to have kids to take them camping.”

“Good report!!

I was there with a friend hiking on Sunday morning. Wish I had known you were there...we could of come by and shouted at you.

:-)”

“We were probably already gone! I think we woke at 6:30 and were gone by 7:15 or so.”

“Doh!

I got there at 9am. It sprinkled on us a little but it felt good.”

“Great report, Bit. Sounds like one of our family adventures. Your daughter also is reminiscent of my son. He trips over something and then limps on the wrong foot for the rest of the day!”

“I see a big Travel Trailer or RV in your future bit. ;)
(I have a 22' TT)”

“What a great trip report, sounds like lots of fun! How old are your kids bit? Camping with kids is a blast.

I forgot lots of stuff this weekend, but no one complained that we lived off cheeze-its and chocolate covered pretzels and never brushed our teeth. :) My grandboy is still at the age (2) where a kiss takes care of all boo-boos. My grandgirl (4) whacked her head so many times in the lean-to that by the time she got up Monday morning (and hit her head again) she claimed she liked hitting her head - and did it once on purpose just to prove it, lol!”

“It was a good time. We'll be doing it again soon. I'm not too sure that either of my kids will be very keen on backpacking, but you never know.”

“My kids are 8 (daughter) and 5 (son).

We're looking at getting a pop-up camper to start with. We may graduate to a larger camper in a few years.”

“As a kid, all my family did was "tent camper" camping. I eventually started backpacking. So there is hope for your kids!

:-)”