Growing up in the NYC area, I had never been camping until six years ago. It wasn't until my daughter Chase was in first grade, that we participated in her school's annual family camping trip. Having never camped before, I had so much anxiety that first year about going that I almost didn't make it. If my dh would have allowed me to, I would have sent her with close friends for the weekend. The whole idea of bears, raccoons, and nature was a little much at the time for this NYC girl. And since my heart really wasn't in it, I was definitely in denial and only borrowed the bare neccessities from friends; stupid! As I recall, that first year was extremely cold and rainy. And due to my lack of effort in planning, we only had sleeping bags with pillows and no blankets or mats for the tent. Ugh!! That was a major learning lesson.
Fast forward six years and I am now a camping pro who has adopted a real LOVE for camping. The key for me is being prepared. With that said, I pack everything but the kitchen sink! My dh does want to strangle me half the time though because he feels he's become the family pack mule. But hey, better prepared than not!. This past weekend we extended our trip by a day and it was the best ever. For the past few years we have camped with our closests friends and the memories of those years have been amazing. In the last year, two of those families have moved on from the school, but in wanting to keep up our yearly tradition still came with us.
When camping with others, divide up the work load by having each family be responsible for a major camping item. Our friend Jim always brings his heavy duty stove for us to cook on, while I tend to focus in on the dishware and decorative items (I like decorating the trees with battery operated paper lanterns). This year our friends Genevieve and Henry brought a friend's Airstream along, and I have to say having a generator was real nice!
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