TEN WAYS A CAMPING TRIP CAN REALLY BRING YOUR FAMILY TOGETHER

The more connected our families become on the internet, the more disconnected they become as individuals, even when living in the same house and being in the same room!  If you notice at the dinner table that your kids are tweeting while your spouse is texting, and then your Blackberry goes off, you know it is time to get everyone into the van and head for the nearest national park for a week of camping.  Forget about work, forget about the lawn, and forget about the World Wide Web.  Hike, fish, swim and laze in a hammock, listening to the glorious sounds and viewing the amazing sights of nature.  If you think you just cannot get away for a camping trip with your family this summer, here are ten good reasons to convince you otherwise, with a little help from Hikingware.com:

1.The time together.  It’s all golden, whether you’re having a blast or holed up inside your tent during a cloudburst.  Think back to your own childhood and what you remember most fondly; was it some fancy catered dinner in a posh restaurant, or was it time spent with family over a smoky campfire making s’mores?

2.Children need these kinds of intense memories of happiness and closeness, or they may grow up suppressing their entire childhood, putting up instead a blank and sterile wall.

3.Variety is an important component in our lives.  We can choose to go to the mountains or the beach or the desert or forest, and that freedom of choice, along with the exhilarating experience of a new environment, refreshes every part of our mental process.  This goes double for children, who are so much more alive to impressions and feelings than adults are.

4.No strict itineraries.  Don’t we get enough of micromanaging when we’re at work or in school?  On a camping trip you can spend a whole afternoon collecting butternuts if you want.  There are no timesheets for either you or your kids.
 
5.It’s about as healthy as you can get.  Fresh air.  Fresh food (well, okay, maybe a lot of freeze-dried, but you’ll find some mushrooms or berries or catch some fish, too.)  Sunshine.  Organic tp.  Everybody sleeps better on a camping trip, if for no other reason than that they’re exhausted!

6.You can relax on a camping trip in a way that you cannot at a hotel or spa.  There is a stillness and majesty in the great outdoors that makes man’s artificial attempts at comfort and leisure seem puny.

7.You cannot stay strangers on a camping trip together.  Even if you’ve had a big blow up at home just before leaving, when you get to the sea shore or start climbing the foothills into the mountains, you instinctively feel how petty are your own concerns and grudges; they melt away like frost in the sunshine and you begin sharing again.  It’s like a second honeymoon and second childhood all wrapped up in one!

8.When you live with nature you have to respect her laws and understand her ways.  Your family is not going to get an understanding of nature from hours of reading on Wikipedia that can compare with ten minutes on the banks of a mountain stream.

9.What daily grind?  You are absolutely free to be who really are, with no constricting necktie or business suit or teacher peering over your shoulder.

10.   And last, but not least; the cost.  A week at a campsite is going to run you a lot less than a week at some fancy hotel with an all-you-can-eat shrimp bar. You may burn the bacon and start to smell like wild onions, but your bank balance is going to stay sweet and plump!

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Written by Tim Torkildson