Camping Hints

A large portion of our California vacation time was spent camping in Crescent City. I highly recommend the KOA campground there. Again, a catch up post from the summer.

Camping with 20 people can be a huge endeavor. It helps if you have a strategy. To help you on your next reunion trip, here are a few lessons I have learned from our little adventure.

1. Get the group site. Bonus for gorgeous scenery, grass instead of dirt, and a layer of trees to keep the other campers away.

Camp food is important. There was a menu, a mile-long shopping list, and people assigned to cooking and dish duty. But none of that is really important. The important things are the treats. Like jiffy pop.

And sticky s'mores.

And basically anything you can put on a stick and cook over the fire. Trust me, it helps to duck below the smoke.


Speaking of campfire, this one is pretty. Driftwood burns really hot. Duraflame logs give off very little heat and will take a few hours to boil water over. Stick with the camp stove. Put the boy scouts in charge of the fire, and staying up all night waiting for the inferno to burn out. They will enjoy it.

Bring along a baby, it will keep every one's nights more interesting. Then bring along a couple of grandma's to hold the baby. This one is mine. You will have to find your own.

Make sure a few of the nights are spent gathered around the fire telling stories and maybe laughing loud enough for the whole camp to hear you. It helps with getting lost children returned if everyone knows where the big group is camping.

You may want to consider hiring a story teller. This one can captivate an audience for hours with "way back when" stories as well as humorously embellished versions of the classics such as the Three Little Pigs or Goldilocks. He comes cheap, too, and prefers to be paid in hugs and kisses. But again, this one is taken. You will have to get your own.

About the tents- try to get one per family. If you have a couple of moms there who had to leave their husbands several states behind and borrow a tent from the locals, make sure the tent has a rain fly. And if it doesn't, improvise one with a tarp before it rains all night. Or you might just end up schlepping three kids and their soggy sleeping bags and pillows through the rain to the car in the middle of the night. Then spending the next drying all the luggage and sneakers that also got wet. Trust me. Oh, and spending an hour or so making the rain fly will pretty much ensure that not another drop will fall from the sky the rest of the week. So just do it to start with.

And just to make sure that there are plenty of people to hold the baby while you take advantage of luxuries like eating, dressing, and brushing your teeth, bring along a grandpa, too. Again, taken. Get your own.

Bring lots of cousins. 7 kids under the age of 8 will keep things exciting and make the club meetings and imaginary adventures much more fun!

Don't forget to take time to smell the flowers. And pick them. And braid them. And wear them. And rip them up into tiny pieces and throw them at your brother in an improvised snow storm of flower fairy dust.

Keep the campsite neat and orderly. Circle the chairs for defense against Indian attacks. Or maybe not. Wrong hint. How about so everyone can keep their feet warm and to divert the flow of kid traffic around the fire pit.

Watch out for native wildlife.

(Completely unrelated side note: Sword fern. Bracken fern. Lady fern. Deer fern. Redwood. Red alder. Star flowers. Monkey flower. Cascara Segrada. Sea tongue. Sea lettuce. Bubble algae. Poison oak. There are all the plants I remember from the 10th grade biology field trip. Who says you won't ever use the stuff you learn in high school! And Duncan, last week I caught Andy picking shamrocks and chewing on them. He kept looking for the one that would taste like an apple. Thanks for that)

Bring along some board games. If there is one all the parents are sick of playing (like a color card trip through a land of smiling sweets) rope a teen uncle into playing instead. He will love it on the inside even if it doesn't look like it.

Go in groups to the bathroom. Ask before you leave if anyone has to go. At least 5 kids will say they do. If not, you risk the chance of having to take them one at a time at fifteen minute intervals throughout the day. And it will take all day!

Finally, bring a friend. Everything is better with a friend!

Happy Camping!