Welcome to my series on the joys of family camping. In this series I’ll remember my own past to help you understand why I think that camping is a wonderful family experience. My family started camping when I was 13 years old and in the almost 40 years that followed, I’ve had some tremendous family experiences while camping. In the process, I’ll turn you on to some great places to go camping and help you make a list of the basic equipment you’ll need.

One of my favorite parts of a family camping trip is the chance to experience wildlife in a totally new way. The first example of this in my life was on our very first family camping trip. It was June of 1969 and my dad decided that we would try camping for that summer’s vacation. Dad decided we were going to visit Ocean City, Maryland and see the wild ponies at Assateague Island National Seashore. Imagine how cool it was for my brother, sister and I (aged 4, 10 and 13 respectively) to see those ponies running around wild. Yes, we could have stayed at a motel and driven to see the ponies, but it simply wouldn’t have been the same as waking up, closing our camping tent, packing our picnic basket and then walking to where we could check out the ponies. It felt to me like we were part of the ponies’ world rather than intruders into their world.

Among the spectacular wildlife I’ve seen while camping are wild moose in Maine, a spectacular monarch butterfly migration in Long Island (yes you really can go camping in Long Island), dozens of hawks and bald eagles near Harrisburg, PA, a migration of tiny frogs in South Carolina and hundreds of deer in one evening on the Skyline Drive in Virginia. All of these trips have etched memories for a lifetime into my mind. I only wish that digital cameras were better when I was a kid. That reminds me, don’t forget to take your camera on your next camping trip and when you go, please, please take nothing but pictures and leave nothing but footprints.