Family Camping, whether in a tent, pop-up camper, a towable trailer, motorhome, or any other type of RV, unites families through great memories!

That's what we talk about in this 331st episode of the RV Podcast.

And through our special podcast guest - a Mom and Grandma who has passed along a love for the outdoors and family camping to her children - and the remembering of Jennifer and me with own experience with our kids.  We hope that this article and our podcast will inspire newcomers to try it out and cause others to rekindle a love affair of the great outdoor and family camping.

You can listen to the podcast in the player below or scroll down this page for shownotes and a transcript of the interview, plus links and resources about all the things we talk about. 

There is great power in family camping

Jennifer and I have camped our entire married life.

I grew up in a family that hunted and fished but we never really camped. When Jennifer and I got married, one of the first things she insisted on was that we would be a camping family. She grew up camping and spent family vacations in tents and trailers along the shorelines of our Michigan Great Lakes.

 The first big expense we made as a married couple was a 13-foot Shasta trailer. As we started having kids, we replaced it with a Coleman pop up camper.

And although we camped in state and county cames every time we could, our preferred style even way back then was boondocking - though no one called it that then. It was truly off the grid, with no hookups, down a rough two-track carved out of the woods in Ogemaw County and along the Rifle River.

This Coleman Popup was what we used for family camping back in the '70s. That's our favorite spot along the Rifle River in northern Michigan.

My sister and her family owned a bunch of raw acreage up there and even in this empty nest stage of our life, we take our RV to the exact same spot as often as we can.

Photo of the tent Jennifer and I used from the 80s through the 90s

Our three kids grew up camping and the memories we made around campfires, hiking deer trails, taking innertubes down the swift-moving river, and being together made memories that we all still laugh about today.

After our kids went to school and grew up, Jen and I sold the popup and turned to tent camping for many years. We've been in small Class B and Class C motorhomes since 2012.

Our daughter, Wendy camps in a tent with her family and has passed her love of family camping to her husband, Dan, and daughters, Elizabeth and Rachel. Son Jeff didn't have to work to convince his wide Aimee to camp, She, too, grew up in a camping family and they camp every chance they can in a travel trailer with their kids Jovie and Jax.

And all of us get out a couple of times a year for big family campouts. Our third child, Scott, along with his wife, Lauri, and grandsons Zachary, Nick, Matthew, and Jacob, lives in Nashville. And while he is not doing much camping these days because of work responsibilities, we expect him to do so. 

Here's a video of one of those summer family campouts we do with our grown kids and grandkids, this one from Silver Lake along Lake Michigan.

That was from a couple of summers ago. Here's our latest family campout, this one taken just this fall, right around Halloween time.

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The benefits of Family Camping

Here's a list of 7 camping benefits that Jennifer and I can quickly identify:

Disconnecting from devices and connecting with one another

Having quality one-on-one-time away from the daily routines of home, work and school

Learning about God's creation, the natural world, wildlife, and the seasons not from a book but by seeing it and living in it

Learning how to handle challenges together, be it mechanical problems on the road, sudden storms, or sorting out personal issues. There's nothing like being in a confined space together to quickly get to issues that otherwise may simmer and build resentment.