Summer Camping Season is here! Please excuse the typos!

We are well into summer vacation and we begin our first official summer trip tomorrow! This will be my biggest trip so far. I’ve literally been planning this trip for two and a half years. In that time it has morphed from a pre-covid quest through mountain country to the tip-top of the west coast to a more modest journey through Southern California. We are leaving Oklahoma and traveling through New Mexico to Arizona and then on to Joshua Tree National Park. Next, we are headed to see the sequoias! After a leisurely stay there, we will make a quick trip to the coast. On the return trip, we will be visiting some of my favorite spots in New Mexico.

Preparing for a long road trip with kids!

Summer Reading Goals

We have so many goals this summer but none is more important to an English teacher like me than our summer reading goals. So besides all of the packing that needs to be done which I will discuss below, I have to prepare for meeting our reading goals. At the school that my son attends, there are two books he must read this summer. One is Bridge to Terabithia and the other is Tuck Everlasting. Both of these titles are appropriate for my eight-year-old who also needs to complete reading minutes, but does not have a specific title that she must read. Hence, I come to my first problem. (Warning! Problems and inconveniences will occur! Thats just life!) My aux cord does not work! Otherwise, I would totally just connect my iPhone to my stereo system and play the audible titles for both of these books. Unfortunately, I did not have time to replace my Aux cord port in my 2010 Honda Odyssey. So I’m off to the library to find CD versions of these books. We have a entertainment center in our van, so I am also going to be renting DVDs from the library of classic movies we love. Most likely those will be studio Ghibli movies. I am discouraging devices on this trip. They always run out of batteries, anyway, so it’s best to discourage them or only use them for certain times. Otherwise, your child will be begging to charge their devices your entire trip which can be a true pain. Also, if they are on their device they probably won’t be paying much attention to the book which is important. Some people don’t like audiobooks, but the truth is an audiobook works just as well as any book being read aloud to your child. There literally is no difference. So audiobooks for the win, but, as you can imagine, if they have two different things going on at the same time say playing or watching on a device then they won’t absorb the contents of the book they’re listening to. Duh!

Food and other necessities…

You and your kids will get hungry! So unless you want to spend literally hundreds of dollars for snacks at a gas station or on fast food (which by the way will make you sick, I promise) you have to pack some snacks that are easy to get to while on the road. I like to make bags of individual snacks to pass out to my kids and to keep by my side. I also include a cooler in the van with drinks. For this trip I made my own grain free trail mix and mixed candy bags. I will also be taking a bag of chips to be shared along with a pack of Capri Suns a pack of mini Cokes and for me a pack of mini Diet Coke’s because yeah I drink Diet Coke now. Thanks Covid! Don’t forget water bottles!

Tip! Take a camping toilet with you that littles can use when they just can’t wait. It’s better than sending them off into the bushes on the side of the road. Of course, you will need to stop in order for them to use the camping toilet; we keep ours in a convenient location. Be sure to pull off into an area that is away from the side of the road for maximum safety. If your little one is shy you can always use a sheet or blanket to give them privacy.

Camping Gear

We have collected camping care over the last nine years. In that time we have two sets of gear: one for my husband who is a camping aficionado. He will make you pancakes and a full course breakfast if he comes on a camping trip. He has a special camping hammock along with all kinds of nifty camping gear that I simply don’t have the time for. My set of camping gear includes kid friendly items that aren’t very expensive. That includes everything from my tent which is a pop-up tent— the kind with joints that allows an adult to quickly set it up by themselves—to our folding chairs that take a licking and keep on ticking to our kitchen gear. By kitchen gear, I mean anything that you will use to store or prepare food. My number one essential is some form of camping stove. My camping stove is a lifesaver. You won’t always be able to make a fire quickly enough or one strong enough to cook your food. You can’t guarantee that you will even be allowed a camp fire depending on fire safety conditions. Camping stoves even work for marshmallows. I use both a single canister stove and a double canister stove, so I can technically have 2-3 burners going at once. One might be boiling water for tea and the other might be making bagel pizzas(—You take your shredded cheese and throw it on a skillet, cover it with pizza sauce, and then top it with bagels. Cover and simmer on low heat until cheese is melted and bagels are warm to the touch. Serve upside down and voilà, pizza!)

• Tent that you can put up with minimal help
• Mallet
• Sleeping bags
• Sleeping mats
• Camping toilet
• Bathroom stuff (towels, wash clothes, toiletries, toilet paper)
• Kitchen stuff (utensils, knives, cutting board, plastic bags for storage)
• Food with meals planned out ahead of time (something like Day one: breakfast, oatmeal; lunch, peanut butter and jelly; dinner, black bean burritos.) Tip: Camping is not the time to fulfill everyone’s tastes. Camping is the time to be grateful for what we have. Which means that if you have a picky eater you’re going to have to find a few foods that they will eat and that are convenient and easy to take. If they have to eat cheese and crackers the entire time that’s OKAY.

The final step is putting it all in the car, making sure everyone has everything they need (dependent on said person and their needs), going to the restroom one last time, saying goodbye, plugging in your directions into your phone or else printing them out and then saying goodbye!

Believe me, I have actually had a semi-successful camping trip with nothing but a tent without stakes and a bag of oranges in my car. Note that was a spur of the moment mini trip that only lasted 24 hours. The point is consider your essentials in life and then add a few fun things and you should be good. I always forget a pair of scissors for some reason, so bring your scissors, too!