Packing list: Camping

Here's what we brought, or should have brought, to our Memorial Day camping trip. I should mention that we were tent camping near a river in 100-degree weather, so those facts drive some of our gear choices :)

Tent
We have a Coleman 8-person Instant Tent.

Our campsite is pretty dusty, so the tent gets dusty too, within about an hour of arrival. Some of the other families brought a carpet or mat for feet wiping, or a Dustbuster to vacuum out the dust. Brilliant.

Air mattress and sheets for adults and older kids
Preferably not white sheets. It's pretty gross to see what comes off your body while you're sleeping. Don't ask me how I know.

Pack-n-play or other spot for sleeping for younger kids
Noob slept in a Peapod Plus on this trip. (We actually forgot our Peapod, and had to buy the Peapod Plus on the way down. I'll save that story for another post.)

Air conditioner, fan, or other cooling device
Hard-core campers will laugh at this one, but when it's over 100 degrees in your tent when your 1-year-old (or your 4-month-old, last year!) is trying to go down for his afternoon nap, you really need something to keep him cool.

Bumbo for babies
We don't use the Bumbo a ton at home, but last year, it was really nice having a spot to put Noob that was at least slightly elevated from all the dirt and dust at the campsite. I also saw a family this year that brought their Bumbo down to the river for their infant to sit in. (This goes without saying, but a Bumbo is no substitute for adult supervision in water.)

Noob keeping cool in the Bumbo, May 2010 (4 months old)

Clothing
It gets filthy, so avoid white/light stuff that you really love.

Swimming stuff
Bathing suits, hats, sunglasses, towels, water shoes (I just brought flip flops this year and those did not work well!)

Sunscreen

Clothesline and clothespins
Our tent actually has multiple clotheslines built in, which is handy. But clothespins are still needed to keep stuff from ending up all over the campsite!

Any required medications. Maybe vitamins to keep the weekend from being a complete nutritional waste? Maybe.

Toiletries
Toothbrush and toothpaste. (A mom can dream, right?) Shampoo and soap.

If I ever find an amazing deal on liquid hand soap, I'll stock up and put it in the bathroom at the campsite, because they never have soap and it's a pain to wash the kids' hands back in the "kitchen" at our campsite. (It is in a steep, slippery area that I'd rather the kids avoid whenever possible.) To that end...

...antibacterial hand wipes. Better than nothing.

Diapers (regular and swim) for the non potty trained
This was our third year camping but our first year doing cloth diapers the entire time. We're planning to use cloth diapers on our upcoming trips as well, so I'll probably do a post in September or October about traveling with cloth. For now, I'll just say that it worked out well. The one minor challenge was that the nearest toilet for poop disposal was a bit of a walk from our campsite.

Little potty for the recently potty trained
This was a new addition to our camping gear this year -- we didn't think to bring it last year, even though Littles was potty trained at the time. It worked out really well, not having to run to the campsite bathroom every time she had to go.

Food
On this trip, we always split cooking and cleanup among the families attending. This year, everyone just brought the food to make the meal that they signed up for, which worked much better than trying to coordinate a giant shopping list for all the meals (as we've done in the past).

We also bring snacks for the kids, in case they get hungry between meals or don't like what's being served. Stuff that does well in the heat is best, e.g. cereal bars, crackers, instant oatmeal. We also bring yogurt and fruit in a cooler.

Tip #1: Don't leave bananas in a car in 100 degree weather.

Tip #2: If you have raw meat in a non-vacuum-sealed container in a cooler, put it in a Ziploc bag or something, to avoid raw meat juice all over your lovely fruit.

Don't ask me how I know.

Water
Lots of it. No-spill water bottles for the kids, too. We have the straw cups with their names on them and that was perfect, since it was easy to tell whose was whose.

Booster seat for younger kids
At Littles' age, she is fine without any sort of special chair for eating, but our Fisher Price Healthy Care booster seat definitely came in handy for Noob. Bonus: I could easily hose it down after every meal. It doesn't usually get that good of a cleaning after meals at home, so it was the one item that came home cleaner than it was at the beginning of the trip :)

Baby carrier for younger kids
Last year, Noob pretty much lived in my lovely lightweight solarveil mei tai carrier:

I forgot it this year, and kicked myself constantly for that. It would have been so nice to be able to contain Noob (so I wouldn't have to worry about him wandering off from the campsite) while leaving my hands free. He probably won't need it next year, but I'll bring it just in case!

Toys
Obviously, nothing irreplaceable or non-washable. We brought a backpack full of random toys for both kids, and honestly, they got played with just enough to get completely filthy. Not worth it at all. We usually bring books, too, and they never get read. The only toys that really get played with are sand toys (shovels, buckets, etc.), water toys (water squirters, dolls that can go in water, etc.), and bubble machines!

That's all I can think of for now, but I reserve the right to come back and edit this post as I think of things over the coming year :)

Sleeping arrangements on the road

Noob sleeping in a hotel-provided crib, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (9 months old)

Ahhhh, sleep. An ongoing challenge for most parents of small children, even at home. Throw traveling into the mix, and nighttime (and naptime!) can become a downright disaster.

When traveling, there is only so much you can do about jetlag, missed naptimes/bedtimes, overactivity leading to overtiredness, and other kid-sleep-busters. But at least you can try to plan an environment that is as conducive to good sleep as possible.

Where to stay?
When traveling, we try to find places to stay that have multiple rooms, so that Hubby and I can stay up in one room while the kids sleep in another room. We've stayed in 1- or 2-bedroom suites at a variety of Residence Inns for this reason. We've also found places like the Douglas Fir Resort during our visit to Banff National Park, where we had a lovely condo with a separate bedroom. We put Littles to sleep in the bedroom and then hung out in the living room until we were ready for bed. As a bonus, many of these places also have a kitchenette, so we can cook meals at "home," rather than having to drag the kids out to eat at restaurants every night.

If we can't find a reasonably-priced suite-style hotel at our destination, we can make it work in a regular hotel room, too. It often means falling asleep when the kids do, but when you're on vacation, having an excuse to go to sleep early isn't always a bad thing :)

What to sleep in?
That depends on age. We have an Eddie Bauer infant travel bed that we've used with both kids up until about 6 months of age. I love it and I've been so sad when they've each outgrown it. It is lightweight, it folds up very small, and it provides easy access to a floppy newborn. Just be aware that the sides are relatively low, so it won't contain a crawling baby.

So, with mobile kids, we usually request a crib from the hotel. Hotel cribs get a bad rap, but in many many hotel nights, we've never had a bad/unsafe one. I do try to remember to bring a sheet from home, as some hotels will simply wrap a full-size sheet around the crib mattress, which isn't very safe for young infants.

I should also note that most hotels have provided a pack-n-play style crib, not a "normal" crib like the one you see in the picture at the top of this post. I don't think pack-n-plays can be fully sanitized, but honestly, it doesn't bother me, and we've never had a problem with it. If you're a germophobe, you might want to call ahead to see if your hotel does use pack-n-plays, and plan alternate arrangements if they do.

On occasion, we've stayed at hotels that don't provide cribs at all (such as the Old Faithful Lodge Cabins in Yellowstone National Park), or we've taken trips where we stay with family or friends who don't have cribs. For the Yellowstone trip, we actually lugged our own pack-n-play from home. I don't recommend that when flying :) Pack-n-plays are huge and bulky and generally a pain to fly with. (They're not too bad when driving, though. As I've previously noted, we usually do bring it on road trips.)

In fact, with airline baggage fees being what they are these days, you might find it is no more expensive to purchase a cheap pack-n-play at your destination and leave it there. That saves you the hassle of lugging the pack-n-play around, and if you're visiting someone who you might visit again in the future, you can leave the pack-n-play with them so that you have it for your next visit.

Of course, if you travel frequently like we do, spending $50 multiple times per year to fly with a pack-n-play or purchase a new one at your destination just isn't feasible. So we now have a Kidco Peapod, which is fabulous! It's a little pop-up tent that folds up small enough to fit easily in a suitcase.

 
Noob in the Peapod (with a few other accessories :), camping on the Guadalupe River near New Braunfels, Texas (4 months old). Here, he was using the Peapod as a playpen, but he also slept in it for naps/nighttime on this trip.

Besides its size, another huge advantage that it has over a pack-n-play is that the child can be zipped inside. So if you have a child who can climb out of a pack-n-play, the Peapod is a great option to keep him/her contained. In fact, Littles used the Peapod daily at her sitter's house once she started climbing out of her pack-n-play (at 19 months old).

We have the Peapod P101 model, and Littles fit in it until about 2.5 years of age, although it was definitely a tight fit towards the end. If you have a larger child or just want to get more use out of it, you might look into the Peapod Plus, which is a little bigger.

Littles now sleeps in the "big bed" when we stay in hotels. We make sure to get a room that either has two beds or one bed plus a pull-out couch. I will say, getting her to actually sleep in the big bed is usually a challenge. Too bad our suitcases are usually jam-packed with the stuff we need for all of us, or I would seriously consider getting a Peapod Plus for her to use...

Littles sleeping (at least in theory) in a "big bed," Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (3.5 years old). This was taken at about midnight, when we thought she had been asleep for hours -- wrong! She had been getting out of bed and goofing off all night long.