Roadtripping & Camping with a Baby Part 2

We survived a major camping trip that included 1700 miles of travel, 3 camping locations, 3 states, and 5 nights away. This trip took a lot more organization than our previous camping excursion, but it went much more smoothly! Hopefully, our experiences encourage you to be adventurous with your family. It's ok if things don't go perfectly. Both of our trips had plenty of hiccups, even with lots of planning. But we came away with memories that will be foundational to our family.

Tips for long drives and camping with a baby: 

• Take breaks. Our goal was to try to drive in 3-hour increments before stopping, but being flexible to follow baby's lead in case he needed a stop sooner than that.
• Pack lunches and snacks for the drive. I made sandwiches for every driving day and portioned ziplocks of chips, fruit, and drinks for us. We also had snacks and meals ready to go for Aaron.

 

• Take advantage of community parks on the drive. We used our map app during our drive to find parks along our route. You can find yelp reviews and photos for most parks which can help to ensure that you are finding the correct kind of park (not a business park and in a safe area) and that it has the correct equipment (i.e. slide, bucket swings). It's also a fun adventure! We discovered some really special communities on our drive, like Dunsmuir, CA.

• Know your baby's limits. Aaron's daily driving limit is about 7 hours  (not including stops). It was painful for all of us when we pushed it to 8 hours. Plan accordingly.
• Be flexible!!! We booked a stay in a yurt in beautiful Harris Beach State Park on the Oregon coast. However, when we took our playground break in Medford, OR, it was abundantly clear that the 2.5 more hours of driving to get there was going to be a nightmare for all of us. Not to mention the extra 2.5 hours we would have to spend returning to the I-5 to resume our travels to WA. So we forfeited the $50 for that stay and drove to another campsite that had yurts 30 minutes away. When baby's happiness and comfort come first, the whole family is happier!

• Yurts/Cabins are an easy alternative to tent camping. We just brought some sheets and settled in for the night. It felt so relaxing! Oregon State Parks have the most amazing website to find campgrounds that have yurts, cabins, and even teepees.

• Storage drawers for kitchen supplies. This was an idea we found on Pinterest. It was so much better than digging through a deep tub of supplies.

• Make a detailed menu plan that includes all meals and snacks for baby. We also wrote all the ingredients for every meal so that we forget anything before we left home.

 

 Meals for babies included: pureed chicken soup, yogurt, mashed banana, applesauce, cheese, pear pieces

• Storage containers for baby food. The OXO containers for baby food that I had prepped ahead of time were perfect!
• Baby fence for a safe play area. This was helpful for making sure our crawler didn't go too far. I will say that it works best with a baby who can play alone or with 2 or more little ones.

• Foam tiles for a play area in the tent and for a cushioned walkway. We had a lot of roots and rocks in our campsite, so the extra cushioning was helpful.
• Tent big enough for a pack n play and our air mattress. This made camping so much more comfortable! We were able to put Aaron to bed at his usual bedtime then enjoy some adult time by the fire.

• Dressing baby warmly for sleeping through 50* nights. We put Aaron in fleece pajamas and a beanie to sleep, laid him on top of his lambskin, and covered him with 2 light baby blankets. Even when we were cold under our 2 heavy blankets and sleeping bag, he slept like a rock all night long!
• Toys, toys, toys. We brought lots of toys to provide some distraction during the drive and some entertainment at the campsite. New toys also help provide more interest. I can't believe how many toys we crammed in the car, but I was glad we took them all!
• Baths for baby in a storage tub.

• Put the phone away. Getting pictures is great, but sometimes the camera gets in the way of the moment. I wish I had left mine in the tent more often.
• Adapt and go with the flow. It seems self-explanatory, but when it starts raining or equipment isn't working, it gets really tough to stay focused on the big picture. If everyone can still be fed, sleep, and enjoy themselves, it's going to be fine. For example, we rented a cargo box to go on top of our car, but after our time tent camping with family, it wouldn't open at our next stop. Our tent, camp chairs, pack n play, sleeping bag, extra warm blankets, and astro turf were trapped. Fortunately, our next camping stay was in a yurt so we were done with the tent. We were really bummed to be without the sleeping bag and blankets, but especially anxious about missing the pack n play. While I happened to have a spare blanket in my bag, we had to get more creative to put together Aaron's sleeping arrangement. We took the twin mattress provided in the yurt, put it on the floor, put down blankets, then created a rectangle around the mattress with the baby fence. Ingenuity at its finest!

 

It was such a special weekend of good conversations with Brandon on the long drives and memories of experiences the 3 of us shared over the weekend. On the last night I was putting Aaron to bed and I took a few extra minutes to hold him as I realized how quickly time has passed. Our family will have more adventures, but we will never have that same experience again.

 

Camping with a Baby: Things We Did Well & Lessons Learned

After our first camping trip as a family of 3 we are tired, sore, wizened, and already thinking about our next camping trip.

While we had a great time making memories as a new family, we learned a lot. Hopefully our experiences will encourage you to have fun in
the great outdoors with your little ones too!

First, here are some of the things that we did well:

• We just went for it. It's easy to be intimidated by camping with kids, especially babies. But we loved camping before kids, and want to raise our kids enjoying one of our favorite past times.

• We kept baby warm. Between long sleeves, hats, double layered pants, and jackets, baby stayed very warm. At night we wrapped him in a blanket by the campfire. Then, he slept between us which was good for him... but not for us.

• Screened-in awning to keep bugs away from baby and meal time. Brandon found a huge 11'x9' screened-in awning with magnetic closing doors at Costco for $90. That thing was amazing! Looking forward to using this in the summertime when there are lots of mosquitoes. (This one is a similar magnetic door screened cover)

•  Pack n Play area. We put our Pack n Play in the screened-in area to create a safe, clean play space for Aaron. We would put a few select toys in with him and he played independently 10-30 minutes at a time.

• We brought lots of toys and favorite things. Even though space was tight, we brought a full bag of his toys and the familiar lambskin he sleeps on in his crib at home. Those items made independent play time and sleeping go smoothly.
• Clip on seat. This clip on seat hooked right onto the picnic table for our meal times. Bonus: it is compact for travel.

• We planned some low maintenance meals. Cooking meals that are as good or better than meals we make at home is one of our favorite parts of camping. We love Dutch oven cooking, but it is fairly time intensive and better for groups than it is for only 2 adults. So foil packet meals were great for the short prep and almost no clean up. Now, I understand why those boxes of Costco ready to eat cereal bowls were so popular with my family when we were little. (Remember those?!)
  
  
• Astroturf! We got a large piece of Astroturf for free recently and I'm so glad we picked it up! The turf was wonderful as a mat outside the tent to cut down on tracked in dirt and it was a great place to allow Aaron to do some supervised scooting. On our next trip, I don't think he'll stay on the turf as easily though unless we put up some temporary fencing; which, isn't a bad idea!
  
• Prepped meals at home. We spent about 2 hours at home prepping ingredients for meals so they were ready to go. We chopped onions, cooked bacon, fajita chicken, rice, and prepped an apple crisp topping and base. This prep made it so easy to reach into the cooler for the appropriate Ziplock and throw a meal together.
• Ready to go meals for baby. We love those Plum organic squeezeable meal packets! (He loves them too!)
  
  
• We planned a short stay. For our first trip, 2 nights was just right! Since we weren't sure how things would go, it was nice that we found a first come, first served site so we could pay one night at a time. 
• We did research. Campgrounds vary quite a bit. Some are wonderful for families, while some are more for crowds of college kids. Read Yelp, Tripadvisor, reservation details, and look for campground photos. We camped at Butano State Park which was perfect for families!

Ok, so before it sounds like I'm bragging about how great we are, here are some of the lessons we learned from our first campout:

• Everything takes longer. Everyone tells you how much longer things take with a baby, but sometimes you don't believe it until you experience it. Before baby, it would take us 1-1.5 hours to pack up the car and the same to break camp. With baby, it took us 3 hours to do both tasks. Knowing that it would take us that long would have saved me some anxiety.
• More easy meals!!!! We had a few meals that were a bit ambitious. The stuffed fajita peppers and paleo apple crisp were delicious, but could have been skipped or modified to be foil packet meals. This is one I want to focus on and start making a special family camp recipe binder.
• More blankets and warm clothes for mom and dad. Self-explanatory one. Baby was warm, but we were a bit chilly. We were so focused on keeping him warm that we didn't think about ourselves for every situation.
• Bathtime bucket. This time we were able to keep Aaron relatively clean since he is not very mobile yet, but next time we will definitely need to have a bath bucket and supplies under the screened awning for nightly scrub-downs.
• Bigger tent with a designated sleeping space for baby. We took our 4-person tent with a queen size mattress and it was very tight. Brandon and I were almost falling off the mattress with our son sleeping starfish style between us. It was also a bummer that Brandon and I couldn't cuddle in the cold, but rather had to sleep in odd contorted positions to make sure Aaron had enough space. At least he slept amazing! (Sidenote: we had a large tent given to us that we were planning to bring, but we discovered last minute that it was missing all the tent poles!)
  
• Try to keep your baby's nap schedule. Aaron's main nap of the day happens after lunch time from about 1-3, which is pretty typical. We made the mistake of taking an excursion into town during that time hoping that he would be flexible... this was a recipe that led to no afternoon nap and an overtired baby that evening. In my opinion, I think the optimal times for an outing would be in the morning after breakfast or late afternoon (post-nap).

 These last two lessons are the most important things you can take away from this post, and were big ones we debriefed about after some frustrated conversations.

• Make the choice between utility/resourcefulness and quality time. I can get pretty ambitious about trying to reduce waste, using non-disposable items, and maximizing baby-free moments to clean, prep, etc. All those things are well and good but if you try to do all those things 100%, you are choosing that over quality time together. I'm not saying use only Styrofoam and a new cup for every drink. Next time, I'll bring some paper or compostable dishes and create a soapy bowl or bucket to toss utensils and dishware into to create one dishwashing time. I'll also put quality time or relaxing first!
• Quality family time ≠ Quality couple time. We made wonderful memories as a family, but between all the work camping takes and wrangling a 7 month old, Brandon and I barely interacted as a couple, let alone had any physical contact! 3 things that we will do differently next time:
1. When (or if) baby takes a nap, take those first 15-30 minutes to connect in some way or relax together enjoying your surroundings.
2. If there's a time that baby is content with some independent playtime, again, take those first few minutes to connect even if it's just to hug and share a laugh over something that happened that morning before you start tackling clean-up duties.
3. Separate sleeping space for baby. So many reasons for that one! 

Camping with a baby and seeing their wonder as they look at the trees and touch the dirt is really amazing. It is also a rare time of being completely unplugged together. It takes work, but it is so worth it!

For more tips, check out Roadtripping & Camping with a Baby Part 2!

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