Have Fun this Summer – Go Camping
Welcome to my series on the joys of family camping. In this series I’ll remember my own camping experiences to help you understand why I think that family camping is a great way to bring your family together. My family discovered camping when I was 13 years old and in the 39 years since then, I’ve had some tremendous family experiences while camping. In the process, I’ll turn you on to some great places to go camping and help you make a list of the camping gear you’ll need.
One of my favorite parts of a family camping trip is the chance to experience nature up close and personally. The earliest example of this I can remember was on our very first family camping trip. It was June of 1969 and my father decided that we would try camping for our summer vacation. Dad decided we were going to visit Assateague Island National Seashore and see the wild ponies. Imagine how special it was for my sister, brother and I (aged 4, 10 and 13 respectively) to see those ponies running around in nature. Yes, we could have stayed at a hotel and driven to see the ponies, but it simply wouldn’t have been the same as waking up, closing our camping tent, packing our picnic basket and then walking to where we could check out the ponies. It felt to me like we were part of the ponies’ world rather than intruders into their environment.
Among the spectacular wildlife I’ve encountered while camping are wild moose in Maine, an amazing monarch butterfly migration in Long Island (yes you really can go camping in Long Island), dozens of bald eagles and hawks in Central Pennsylvania, thousands of tiny frogs in South Carolina and dozens of deer in one day on Virginia’s Skyline Drive. All of these trips have etched memories for a lifetime into my mind. I only wish the quality of cameras was better when I was a kid. That reminds me, don’t forget to take your camera on your next camping trip and when you go, please, please take nothing but pictures and leave nothing but footprints.
