One topic I got when I asked what y’all wanted to see on the blog was about car camping with a baby. Craig & I have camped countless times over our 6+ years together but only recently took Emma for the first time! You may remember over Labor Day we spent one night of our weekend out in Pisgah National Forest in Western North Carolina. We figured since it was our first time taking her camping that maybe we should start with just one night in case it didn’t go so well!
We also decided car camping would be much easier as well. Backpacking with a baby and all the things a baby needs would be much more challenging to tackle, so we might not do that at least until she can hike on her own! Carrying a pack and a baby in a carrier would be a lot. Ha. We decided to just try to take the things we do when we are usually traveling and keep it as status quo as possible for her. Brought her portable sound machine, her stuffed animals, all that.
So, we car camped, and if you’re unfamiliar that just means we found a campsite that we could drive to and park next to it. We aren’t big fans of traditional “camp grounds” where everyone parks next to each other. Nothing wrong with them, but they just aren’t as private or quiet. We just go driving down service roads in National Forests and you can usually find some one-off campsites! That’s what we did and found a really great one that was actually huge! Good thing too because our new family tent is kind of massive 🙂 We have the REI Kingdom 6 tent, and it’s much bigger than we need for just 3 people but, we figured we can grow into it. I like being able to stand up in it and it easily fits our MegaMat and Emma’s pack & play.
We also brought our Yeti to keep her milk in and some of our food we made, and my wine! Haha. Always bring a drink for around the fire 🙂 We just cook over an open fire that Craig will get started and he has camping cookware that packs easily. I don’t know the specifics of what he has, so if that is of interest to you – shoot me an email or leave a comment below and I can try to find out from him!
We hiked around a lot that day and Emma wasn’t really on her usual nap schedule, so she was pretty tired when it came time for bed around 6pm. The only tough thing was that since it was still light out, and there wasn’t really a way to black out the tent, she cried on and off until about 7 when it finally got dark and she was able to go to sleep. We went to bed probably around 8:30 or 9 and we all slept until just before sunrise. It was a chilly morning so Emma got into bed with us to snuggle and it was just so cozy & peaceful!
Really minus her not being able to fall asleep easily when it was still light out, the rest of the time was pretty easy and we had a great time! We think next time we can try two nights…the hardest part for us was getting all the tent stuff set up, so once that was done we could have had a more chill day the second time around! Looking forward to making more memories in the future. In the meantime, here are some pictures from this trip!
If you have any questions let me know!!
xo,
Bess
Such a fun weekend!