Camping with a Toddler: A How-to

I have not seen an actual book devoted to this topic. There is a chapter in the book titled "Be Prepared: A Practical Handbook for New Dads" but the authors overlook many nuances of a family camping trip. So here's what Keith and I came up with:

#1- Divide and conquer
We had to divide the duties in order to succeed at camping. Someone had to watch Cole while the other put the tent up. Someone had to watch Cole while the other cooked a simple dinner. You get the picture: someone is in charge of parenting while the other does the camp set up and maintenance.

#2- Always remember the things you forgot the last time
Remember that post where I talked about the things we forgot and the things that really worked? Yeah. About that. We forgot the mosquito netting. Again. And we didn't bring enough formula.  Thankfully, there was a supermarket and a CVS close by. We never found netting, but we did buy the formula at the CVS.

#3- Don't feel bad when your toddler wakes up everyone at  6 a.m.
Seriously. It's going to happen. In fact, your toddler is going to wake everyone up several times a night. But don't feel bad. Why? Because your neighbors are going to ignore the beginning of quiet hours anyway, so you'll be pissed off enough about them keeping up your tired baby. When 11 p.m. rolls around and your neighbors are setting up an easy-up with stakes and everything, you will be plotting your revenge for the next morning, or two, or three. You won't even need to remember this rule.

#4- Strategize beforehand how you will handle night waking
If it weren't for breastfeeding, I really don't know how we'd have gotten Cole back to sleep each night. It's not like we could have brought our Glider with us camping. Or the sound machine. But for those of you who bottle feed, a pacifier is the next best thing. Make sure you have plenty of those. Because you will lose one or two or three.

#5- Have a fool-proof plan for getting toddler to sleep at night
Our plan worked 2 out of three nights in Cape Cod. Our plan? If he didn't fall asleep while nursing, we'd walk him in the stroller until he passed out. The second night, Cole refused to fall asleep in the stroller. And we were both dog tired from walking the campground. So we laid in the tent and pretended to sleep and eventually, after bouncing off all four walls of the tent like 20 times, he finally passed out on the other end of his sleeping bag. The same thing happened when we were in the Daks.

#6- Be aware of the environment around your campsite
Poison Ivy is all I have to say. Cole left the Daks with two pimples that blossomed into several "pimples" on both his knees. He still has it (although it seems to be fading a bit) and I am convinced it was from something he walked into while on that first camping trip. When we got to the campsite in Cape Cod it looked as if the site was surrounded by poison ivy, so we went to the clerk at the office and she said she was "pretty sure" it wasn't poison ivy. Pretty sure didn't cut it for me, so I asked her to tell me what it was. She then did a crappy job of trying to google it while simultaneously calling another camp employee on the phone who - it turns out- couldn't remember the name of it. But they were sure it was some type of fern. In the end, Keith noted that it was leaves of five (well three on top and 2 underneath) so it must not be poison ivy. Plus, she was quick to add, they wouldn't be in business if there was poison ivy everywhere. That story aside, I watched Cole closely and only allowed him to stay within the confines of the site. I felt bad about not letting him explore more, but I didn't want to take a chance. When we got to the beach though, we went at low tide, so I made up for all the containment by letting him go where he wanted.

#7-Draw the line between campsite and camp road
While walking Cole in the stroller the first night, we watched a young man almost drive into a fence while checking his iPhone. Of course, he then drove down the road past our campsite and I was paranoid about the road from then on. Even though this was clearly a family campground, people were on their cell phones everywhere or they were speeding. So I made sure (just like I did during our first camping trip) to
draw the line between the campsite and the road.

#8-If your vehicle is not big enough for all your camping stuff, don't buy a bigger vehicle - just get a roof box
We have a CRV, but now that we have a child, Keith has been remarking that we should have gotten a Pilot, since we have so much crap and not enough room (now that we can't pull down the back seats). So, at the end of June, we took the plunge, bought a roof rack and then purchased a Thule Ascent 1600. It saved us on our last two trips. We were able to fit everything we wanted, including Cole.

#9- Bring the whole toddler medicine cabinet and don't look back
Keith thinks I'm paranoid, but if I didn't bring the thermometer, I might have been scared that Cole had a fever, and if I hadn't packed the acetaminophen, we would have had to pack it up and leave for home on that first night (of each trip!)

#10-Keep the dinners simple. If you must be fancy, prepare the fancy part ahead of time.
Keith fancies himself a gourmet chef. And, he is. He cooks awesome dinners and made delicious baby food for Cole when we were doing the whole puree thing. But it's not suitable for camping. It takes too much time and is too much of a hassle come clean up time. I told Keith as much before we went on our second camping trip, and he swore he would keep it simple. And he did! We had pasta and ravioli. Cole loved the pasta, but spit out the ravioli. Well, you win some and you lose some.

#11- Two nights. No more. No less.
We camped two nights in the Daks and then stayed the third night in a hotel. The third night was an adventure and much more comfortable. Our second camping trip was supposed to be two nights an hour away from home. On the morning of our departure, it was raining and, according to both iPhone weather apps, we saw how crappy the weather was going to continue to be.  So we decided spontaneously to head to Cape Cod, where it was supposed to be beautiful. It was beautiful. And it was fun (albeit, lots of hard work). But on Monday night we decided to reserve our site for a third night. We realized later that we should have waited until Tuesday morning to make that decision. By Tuesday night, I was hoping we could either go home (totally unrealistic) or go to a hotel. We decided upon neither and stuck it out. Cole woke up just before 6 a.m. on Wednesday and we were gone by 8 a.m. Our first stop along the way home? Grumpy's Restaurant in East Dennis. Kind of fitting.

"Dude! I can see Dada!"

This was too cute not to include.

"You mean I can go anywhere?"

"Hm. Where should I go next?"

Mama and son- back to the ocean, and back to their roots.

"Come back seagull, come back!"

"I'm going to climb that rock and she's not going to stop me."

"Wheee!"

"This is the shovel my parents bought me so I wouldn't steal anyone else's."

On one of our long evening walks up the hill from our site.

"Yeah, I woke up the French Canadians next to us. What are you gonna do about it?"

Birds watching.

The "ferns" surrounding our site.

Our little chipmunk.

The fish face