Moms and Kids Camping

Do you dare venture out with your children to the wilds of Washington to tent camp? Yes! Do it! It's fun and kids love to get dirty, sleep in a tent and hang around a campfire at night.

We are fortunate to have some amazing campgrounds close to Edmonds, which keeps the drive around two hours. That's pretty much the end of a child's attention span, not to mention the time it takes to watch "How to Train Your Dragon," eat some snacks and say "When will we get there?" 27 times, while fighting with siblings in the back seat. Good times.

I highly recommend that if you are considering camping without a husband, you take a friend to cushion the trying moments. With another mom and extra kids, it broadens the social circle, thereby allowing you to have more patience for putting up the tent in a windstorm and such.

I recently went to Lake Wenatchee (this side of Leavenworth) with a friend and her two children, where we slumbered in a 10-person tent she called the Harry Potter Quidditch tent. We slept on mattress-style air beds wrapped in our down-filled duvets from home, burrito-like. The kids slept in sleeping bags which they think are more fun than down-filled duvets.

Car camping allows one to bring comforts that would never cut it on a wilderness survival trip. Collapsible table? Sure! Two pilllows each? Absolutely! I like to bring a cooler full of Capri Suns, juice boxes and water bottles, then pack comfortable camping chairs, a mesh tent for over the picnic table in the event that bugs are a problem, and loads of creature comforts that would be laughed out of Outward Bound Training School. Last camping trip, we hooked up with another mom from the 'hood, at the campground, who'd brought her French Press Coffee Maker. I've capitalized those words for a reason.

I like to book campsites with shade, bordering on the woods for privacy and lots of room to run around, close enough to the bathrooms but far enough away from the roadside tap for privacy, with a view of the lake, if possible and an easy trail to the beach.

This state park website is easy to use and lets you see photos of each campsite! I use this link for Lake Wenatchee, two hours away, just beyond Stevens Pass. It has a playground, sandy beach, trail riding nearby and flush toilets. We do the Reptile Zoo in Monroe to break up the trip and stop for a burger at the Alpen Shack just east of that. It's a slow trip through Monroe, Sultan, Gold Bar, but beautifully quaint.

This website is for Reserve America and includes 174 campgrounds, both state, federal and private for all of Washington State. I use this one for Lake Kachess, which is just past Snoqualmie Pass on I-90. Mineral Loop does not have flush toilets or a nearby playground, but it's super close and the lake is pristine.

Moms and Kids Camping is the bomb but you must not obsess if the children get dirty, scream, only want marshmallows for breakfast, get some scrapes and bites, or play with pointy sticks. OK, you shouldn't let them play with pointy sticks, but you see where I'm going with this. The joy of camping for kids, at least, is being a different child in the wild - one who wipes bacon grease on their pants and doesn't get yelled at, and who sits around a campfire telling riddles with marshmallow in their hair, the fire crackling in front of them.

Children love to camp because rule boundry lines get fuzzy. Needless to say, safety must always be first, especially around a campfire, but as a mother, we can let some of the house rules fly out the window when camping. My kids go to bed with filthy feet for one thing. They also tend to wear the same clothes for days, unless they change into a swim suit for the beach. My daughter does not brush hair. Instead, she wears pigtails that look like a rats nest by the end of the trip, and I let the kids eat with their fingers if possible. Think hot dogs, fried chicken, tacos, and shishkebobs.

This website has Smokey The Bear safety tips for campfires. I'm no expert but...well actually I am kinda an expert in outdoor survival having studied outdoor education in college and having run Canada's largest outdoor educational facility for two years. That's not to say I'm an expert on car camping (having the car close by) in a lovely tent with my own children.

Before we tent-camped, we had a three-room trailer with a pop-out living room that had a furnace, AC, a bathroom and full kitchen. I always thought this kind of "roughing it" was cheating, even though my friends who considered roughing it at the Holiday Inn, were thrilled. But this 27-foot thing was lots of work for my hubby, maintaining, towing, setting up, leveling the thing, etc. Even with the monstrosity we still made coffee and bacon on the campfire in the morning, still chopped wood, hung out outside the trailer and went to bed semi-dirty. In retrospect, I do miss the trailer when it rains or the bugs are so bad it makes eating dinner unpleasant, but I have to say that the kids like tent camping better.

Here's some essentials I'd recommend you bring, besides the obvious stuff: Playing cards or a Scrabble board, firewood, marshmallow sticks (they are hard to find in the wild, believe it or not), baby wipes, paper towels, old towels, a huge jug of drinkable water with a pump, a tub for dishes, a foot pump for air beds, flashlights for each child, batteries, Sharpie for labelling drinks, foil for campfire cooking, fire lighters, old newspapers, hatchet, bug spray, Calamine lotion for bug bites, tent, camp chairs, Frisbee, football, capture the flag stuff and if you are bringing a bottle of wine, don't forget the corkscrew. Just sayin'.

If you head out to the woods this summer with your children, have fun, set expectations low for your perfection factor and let those kids run through the trees playing whatever game their little imaginations dream up, while you sit with a girlfriend drinking french roast, marvelling on what a terrific mom you are.