Our family loves to camp – the smell of wood smoke, the taste of s’mores, seeing all the stars out, hearing the birds and tree frogs. It is important to take the time to disconnect from our frantic, technology-centric lives, and re-connect with nature.
But what can you do when the money is tight? Or you can’t find anyone to watch the animals (we have a farm, so it is even trickier for us!)? Or what if you just can’t get away?
That happened to us one year so we did the next best thing to getting away – we camped in our backyard!
When to consider backyard camping
- A stay-cation just makes more sense for time or money concerns.
- This is your children’s first camping trip.
- You are new to camping and want to try it out in a low risk environment. It is much easier to run into the house for the tent mallet than to realize you forgot it 200 miles from home.
Set up your ground rules (here were ours)
- No going into the house for TV or other entertainment.
- Parents must participate – this is a family “trip”.
- It is ok to store the food in the refrigerator rather than drag out the coolers.
- It is ok to use the water in the house rather than the outdoor faucet.
- All food must be cooked over the fire pit or on the grill.
- Severe weather can move the camping inside; bugs are not a reason to wimp out.
But what do you do?
We treated this like any other trip. We love to swim when we camp, so we drove to a nearby river and swam. Or you could set up a sprinkler or have a water gun fight. We generally take nature walks, so we took nature walks around the farm (if you live in town you can still do this – you’ll be surprised by all the nature around you when you start looking). The kids played on the swing, the older people sat around and talked, we all played games. We love to stay up past dark to watch the stars, especially during meteor showers.
Planning for backyard camping
Camping can be a bit intimidating if you have never been before. A trip to the backyard is a great way to test out equipment or see what you need to be comfortable. You can often find great deals on camping equipment at garage sales, or borrow stuff from a camping friend to see what you like. Campers love to share what they know and will be happy to help.
Camping if one of the things that you can start small and build up your equipment as you go. For a backyard trip all you really need is a tent and a ground cloth (or not even that). Use blankets if you do not have sleeping bags.
For us, this was a chance to camp and make some memories together when we were not able to get away. I wish I would have thought about doing this for our first camping trip with the kids (you can read about that trip here). That trip would have been less stressful in the backyard! Have fun planning your backyard camping trip!