I wanted to go camping this year. My dad took us camping when I was younger and I loved it. I love being outdoors, however, I haven’t camped since I was a little kid. I have so many reasons why I want to start camping, but the main one is to do something fun with the kids that isn’t expensive. It’s something that, if we get good at it, that I’m hoping we can do a couple of times, a year, maybe all over the country.
Since we hadn’t gone camping as a family, I wanted to do a trial run at a family-friendly resort, hopefully within a 2-3 hour drive. Here are some campgrounds that I came across:
Rickett’s Glenn area
Whispering Pines Camping Estates
Red Rock Mountain Campground
Pioneer Campground
Near Philly
Colonial Woods Family Camping Resort
Little Red Barn Campground
Seven Tubs Nature Area
Ringing Rocks Family Campground
Lancaster, PA (near Hershey, PA)
Lake In Wood
Country Acres Campground
Others
Niagara Falls
Lake George, NY
Montauk, NY
Peaceful Woodlands family campground
Otter Lake Camp Resort
Penn’s Cave and Wildlife Park
Ocean View Resort – Ocean City, NJ
Frontier Town and Castaways – Ocean City, MD
We decided to go to Country Acres Campground. This was a nice compromise because my husband was not too keen on the idea of going camping. In retrospect, thinking that we would do a 2-3 hour drive with 2 kids for 2 nights of camping and hiking was too much. Country Acres was a little over an hour away and in the middle of beautiful Amish Country. Living here in Philly and having access to amazing Amish goodies at Reading Terminal, I take for granted living an hour outside of Amish country.
Being in the middle of Amish Country, we didn’t have to worry about bringing too many food items, utensils, pots, pans, etc. We also ended up doing things that would be less tiring for us that the kids would enjoy: Chocolate World, Hershey Gardens and Turkey Hill Experience. My 4 year old whines when she’s tired. We tried to do Mariposa Grove in Yosemite in May and barely made it past the beginning of the trail. I don’t know why I thought we could do Rickett’s Glen, it would not have been an enjoyable trip for anyone. I have to train a little harder to get my 4 year old to walk longer. I give in to putting her into the stroller too easily since it makes things faster for me.
Here’s what we ate:
Friday: Smorgasbord
Saturday breakfast: Amish goodies picked up the night before
Saturday lunch: Picnic lunch/sandwiches/fruit at Hershey Gardens
Saturday dinner: Hot Dogs on the fire pit
Sunday breakfast: Waffle House
All in all, great trip, short and sweet. It gave us a taste of what we like and don’t like about camping and the length of time that we did it was perfect too. We’d love to do a trip like this with friends, but we’ve found it hard to find families we are close to, who are down to do something like this. Camping isn’t a thing that minorities in my network do! It sounds silly, but anytime I become friends with a caucasian person, I wonder if they have potential to go camping with me and my fam!