Camping this past week taught us some valuable lessons about the activity, and about ourselves as people. I would be lying through my teeth if I said it was easy. In fact, this past week will go down as one of the hardest weeks of our lives. It’s not about the toughness though, it’s about the lessons we learned and the fun we had through it all. 

Nothing will ever go the way you plan it to.

Being our first camping trip with some fun twists in vacation week, we knew it would be a little wild. Yet, when I say nothing went as planned, it didn’t, we improvised a lot. In those changes though, we had a chance to relieve ourselves of the hustle and bustle of life and just fall back in love with one another, which we needed especially now.

Buy good garbage bags 

A little storytime for you. I was trying to be cheap and effective for camping where things get thrown away. So I decided to buy garbage bags from the dollar store instead of the compostable bags we use at home. Bad idea. Bad idea. We ripped more than we used, one completely fell apart when walking to the dumpster and in the end, we ended up using the bags we had from buying ice. You will need garbage bags. Buy the good ones. 

The local grocer is your friend

I thought I had purchased everything we needed in order to cook over a campfire, use the fancy butane stove we got, for sure we were ready. HAHAHA! I left the buns for the hotdogs sitting on our kitchen counter, didn’t pack the condiments, totally forgot about ice in the cooler, AND didn’t put in any clean drinking water.

If it rains….

Make the most out of it. It rained every day of our trip. Our campsite was in the woods and had shade so that meant that when it wasn’t raining the sound of the water coming off the leaves and hitting the top of the tent was loud. We weathered the storm though and went off exploring. We skipped rocks in the lake in the rain, toured some other close by areas and towns, hiked on the singular sunny day, and just made the most of the wetness that plagued us. 

Patience and love above all

Above all patience and love go a long way when camping. The good news is we have a lot more of it than we thought.