Family camping

We spend all our family vacations camping, out of both necessity and preference. Necessity, because we have four kids, and there’s no way we can afford three weeks in high season in a hotel. Preference, because both my wife and I grew up this way.

We’ve come to view camping as a skill, and that’s what I want to talk about today. When you search YouTube for camping advice, the videos you find fall into two broad categories: Folks telling you how to find the best 100.000€ RV, and folks telling you how to survive in the forest with nothing but a Swiss army knife and a pair of shoelaces.

Unsurprisingly, neither category is a good fit for how we spend our vacations. Yet I suspect there’s more people like us out there: Rich enough to afford vacations, not rich or boring enough for hotels, and more interested in a simple, relaxing experience than in material comforts. I see some of those families out here on this campsite right now.

Camping, especially with kids, is a bit of a craft really. Your equipment slowly grows over the course of years, and you build skills. I want to share what we’re doing, and what we’re using, in the hope of helping others (especially families) to have more, and more relaxing, times together.

Accomodation

Having four kids, in an environment where everything is designed for families with two or three children at most, means we often need to go a bit bigger than others. As the core of our camping setup, we’re using a Trigano Odyssee folding caravan. It’s a smallish trailer that we hitch to our car, and that folds open into a comfortable tent for four people — if need be, it can sleep up to eight, though I wouldn’t advise trying that. Ours is from the late 90s, and cost us 1200€ when we bought it in 2012, from the sort of people who call the police on parking offenders, so it was in great shape. It’s starting to show its age though.

These days, it’s where us parents and the two younger kids sleep. The two older kids get a separate 3 person tent to themselves. In addition, we have a shelter (3.5 x 3.5m) for rain protection, and a large tarp (4x5m or something) for shade.

All this gives us plenty of room for sleeping and luggage. It’s perfect as long as the weather is good. On rainy days, we can retreat to the tents and the shelter; the tarp can’t take very much wind, and sometimes needs to be hauled in.

The trailer also is where we store our camping tables and chairs. When we set up, they go under the tarp or in the shelter, depending on the weather.

Cooking & eating

We used to have a foldable kitchen cabinet that we would set up inside the shelter, with a two-flame gas stove. But last summer, I finally got round to building a shelf for the trunk of our van (a Renault Trafic). It’s designed for Euro containers, and has space for the stove, too. This makes organizing the kitchen a lot easier.

So we cook in the back of the car, using a gas bottle stood next to it. Supplies and kitchen gear are stored in the Euro containers. Meals tend to be simple. Cooking and cleaning duties are distributed among the fanily members in pairs, on a rotating basis. These days, all of the kids are old enough to handle all of the tasks: Cooking, washing dishes, shopping.

A couple of years ago we invested in a proper cooler, and it’s doing a great job.

Entertainment

There’s a beach just 50m away. In the trailer, we have various geological strata of toys and gameas for different age ranges. We play board and card games together.

We always carry a large inflatable canoe, a Gumotex Scout. Often, we take an inflatable standup paddle board along as well. Since we’re a kayaking family, there might be some additional boats, but that’s just us.

Oh, and we have at least three hammocks strung up, if at all possible. The family consensus is that we’re here to chill. Whenever someone gets itchy feet — usually it’s me — they can just devise some activity, and head out on their own. For example, I love hiking, or going on overnight kayaking trips. The rest of the family, not so much.

Advantages and limitations

This setup is good for stationary vacations in sunny climes. Pick a nice spot, drive there, set up, and stay for 2-3 weeks. It certainly wouldn’t work well for families who would like to move somewhere else every few days. We’ve actually spent our vacations in the same campsite for the past decade.

OK, it does lack novelty. But when we arrive, the kids jump out of the car and start scouting to see whether our favorite spots are available. They check whether their favorite greengrocer is working, and which of our acquaintances are there. There’s hardly any stress. Everyone knows what to expect, and it works for us.

Of course, we depend on drinking water and power being available. Toilets and showers are nice, too. But that’s true for pretty much any place where you plan to spend significant time, especially with kids. We’re set up for campsites, not for the wilderness.

Our way of camping is far from basic, but lacks various things that I see our neighbors use: air conditioning (heat waves are a problem), TV, and so forth. We don’t miss any of it.

Conclusion

This setup, built over the years with growing experience, works really well for us. We constantly find details to improve; but the key components are pretty much fixed.

No doubt things will change when the kids grow older, and our vacation team dwindles in number. That’s fine, we’ll adapt. But for now, we’re happy with what we have. It’s enough.

Daily practice (kayaking edition)

I’ve discovered the benefits of daily practice. Quite possibly as the last
human being on Earth, I’ve found out that doing something every day makes you
get better at it.

A few weeks ago, I took a course to learn some basics of freestyle kayaking. At
the moment, I’m not really interested in learning how to run more difficult
whitewater sections. Instead, I want to do more fun stuff on the bits of river
where I already feel comfortable. In my case, “fun stuff” means getting my boat
vertical, pirouetting on the stern, sliding along rocks, and jumping over them.
(Short plug: the kayak school, Outdoordirekt is excellent. Great concept, run by a woman, LGBTQ+ friendly. If you’re in or near Germany and want to learn kayaking, or improve your skills, they’re a great choice.)

Now I’m on a two-week camping vacation on the beach, with my family. The kids
are no longer little, and even though there’s four of them, it’s a very chill
affair. For the first time in literal decades, I can actually decide pretty
freely what I want to do with my day. In fairness, the answers I find tend to
include the words “hammock” and “cold beer” quite frequently.

But I brought a little boat along. It’s a Dagger Centrifuge –
something called a “rodeo boat” when it came out in the mid-2000s. It’s longer
than today’s playboats, but its flat front and stern mean that it performs well
beyond just freestyle waves. You can actually paddle this down a river. The
trade-off is that it’s not quite as easy to get vertical, because the ends have
air in them, and therefore like to float.

Most days during this vacation, I’ve been taking the little boat out for
flatwater practice: Freestyle moves that don’t rely on current to push the
boat, only on the paddler’s technique. It’s honestly a bit frustrating: I know,
in theory, how most of this stuff should work. But in practice, getting all the
little details riight turns out to be supremely difficult. For these moves, you
need exact, sub-second timing on where you put your weight, how you rotate your
body, where you put your paddle and where you move it, and how you manage the
boat’s edges. Get any of these factors wrong, and the move won’t work.
Maddeningly, a lot of the details must be executed exactly opposite to what
I’ve been taught as “proper whitewater technique” for a decade.

Despite the occasional frustration, I’ve now gone out on the water almost every
day for a week, and some things are actually starting to work! I’ve learned to
do Lean Cleans – rotating the boat in a flat circle, without using the paddle! This is an
important foundation for other freestyle techniques. My stern squirts are finally
beginning to work, though I have yet to succeed at turning them into a stern
stall (ie. not just getting the bow up in the air, but actually holding the
boat vertical).

Of course, the technique I’m actually improving most is my roll. A lot of
times, the move fails, and I just tip over. But then, a kayaker can never have
too much rolling practice. All those freestyle moves require significant core
strength, especially if you have to compensate for less-than-perfect execution;
so I get a free core workout with my kayak sessions!

My progress isn’t rapid by any means. I keep having to dial back when
practicing a move, focusing on an easier version or a foundational element
first, before trying again to string all the little bits together. I get
frustrated. When I’m tired, I notice that the moves work significantly less
well than at the beginning of the session.

And yet. Every day, something works a little better. The Lean Cleans, a
challenge at the beginning, have become almost effortless. On the stern
squirts, I can now focus on the finer details, instead of just struggling with
the basics. Sometimes I try a new move, and notice the learning curve ahead.

I’m finally realizing that that learning curve is actually the point.
Everyone thinks the goal is to execute the move I want, perfectly, whenever I
want to; hell, I certainly thought so. But it just became clear to me that I’m
out on clear, turquoise water, in a beautiful corner of the world, with people
I love, and without any pressure. I’m doing something that I’m passionate
about, with no conceivable profit motive — exclusively for the fun of it! (OK,
some of the toddlers at the beach think I’m pretty cool.)

Call me silly, but I feel like I’ve just invented the practice of having fun.