Forming a plan is a wonderful way to spend time, don’t you think?
A plan means you have a starting point, a process to get there, and a goal. That sounds happily productive even if you are not a nurse. I spend time planning my grocery list and meals I want to cook. I plan the week out on a very large calendar…because I am afraid I will miss “getting someone” to their “something” or even worse, miss showing up at work on the correct day. I plan out an exercise routine and when to fit it in (I may not actually get to the exercise but the intention was good). Sometimes, I even plan exotic vacations and trips I will never take for various reasons because I enjoy the freedom of all the possibilities while planning them!
What started as a joke between my nurse husband and I, became our new way to afford a vacation. Previously, I had been overwhelmed with trying to plan any travel with my small children. I had no desire to attempt it. Now as they grew, I found myself really wanting to take them on an adventure. I imagined all the family time we would have and the memories we would make. I hoped they might begin to forget all the times I had lost my temper and yelled at them or had to be at work longer than they wanted. Maybe the good memories would replace the not-so-good memories. A mom can hope, right?
No turning back…it’s time to plan a camping trip.
If you know anything about nursing process, than you know there are steps involved. Nurses know them by heart. After writing a million nursing care plans in school, they have been drilled into your mind. For everyone else, the steps are assessment, diagnosis, planning, implementation, and evaluation. If you really do want to know more, click here. The American Nurses Association has you covered with a quick guide to the basics.
So, our life assessment had revealed the need to travel with the kids to meet our needs of adventure, discovery, relaxation, and family time.
This is where I come clean. Neither of us had been tent camping before.
We owned nothing that could be dubbed “camping gear” and we had no background to base our planning on. Camping was all new territory to us. We had to apply life rules based on what we did know. We had heard many stories of people with awful camping experiences. Stories about rain soaking the tent and everyone in it. Stories of dirty bathrooms with bugs bigger than the toilet. Then consider basic daily tasks like eating. How do you prepare low-sodium food in the great outdoors??? And setting up tents large enough for six might be very difficult. How would learn how to set up a tent with so many poles and pieces? We knew we didn’t want those horror stories to be us.
Time to set goals. I pretty much settled on five that I could live with. They covered all the basics, really.
Goal #1: Come rain or thunderstorm, I will stay dry inside my tent with my family of six.
Goal #2: I will set up my tent quickly and easily, in case other seasoned campers are watching.
Goal #3: There will be clean and close toilet facilities for my children. Between the four of them, a child could easily need to go to the bathroom every hour, all night long.
Goal #4: I will serve low sodium, nutritious food at every meal…without the modern help of electricity…even in the rain.
Goal #5: Be prepared for any medical emergency my children might have.
Upon reflection, what I was looking for was a hotel.
What I ended up with is commonly known as “glamping” or “glamour-camping”. I just wanted to give my kids an experience with adventure without breaking the bank. So here’s what we did to meet these goals and implement this fine plan.
Goal #1:
We researched water-proof tents like crazy. We read tent reviews on every website we could find for at least a week. Finally, we realized to stay dry, a tent needed an outer flap that went all the way to the ground and a extra piece of tent “floor” or a footprint. One night we really did have a thunderstorm and we stayed warm, dry, and happy!
Goal #2:
How do you figure out if a tent is easy to set up before buying it? Watch “you-tube” video’s of course! We narrowed choices of the tents we were looking into that met our criteria… then searched for videos on people setting them up in 10 minutes or less. Really, we figured if they can do it easily… so can we. Learning by watching is great stuff. This is the tent we ended up with and these guys do a great video of it’s benefits. Click to see my mini-hotel!
Goal #3:
The only way to ensure a clean and tidy bathroom accessible at all hours of the day…is to bring your own! Since our tent has two doors and poles that create a little “covered shed” on one side, we put the little bathroom tent out back. Even in the rain, the kids can run through there in a hurry. Did you know they make little camp toilets perfect for kids? A couple of heavy duty kitchen size garbage bags doubled, some cat litter in the bottom of the bag, and you are set to go. Literally. It clumps and smells like flowers. Sanitizing hand wipes and you are back in your sleeping bag in a flash.
Goal #4:
Who am I kidding? Here’s a granola bar while I figure this one out… No really, without rain, cooking over a fire or little gas stove hasn’t been too bad. The first camping meal we made was “Coco Wheats”. Everyone was delighted. Camp cooking still proves to be difficult for me. I would love to get better at this. Please put all your best ideas and recipes in the comment section of this article, please!
Goal #5:
When you do an internet search on medical supply lists for camping you get quite a list. Add all those lists together, put all that stuff in one bag, and you might just live to get back home
Now, I try not to over-think the trip before I get in the car.
We have traveled several times in the last few years, not always using our tent. This maiden voyage was a few years back and I am still learning a lot about camping. Just ask the raccoon who stole my marshmallows, pita pockets, and then sat eating chips our under our picnic table. Now I admit, you cannot plan for everything. But I still have the best stocked camping first aide bag you have ever seen!
The post Two Nurses go Camping (Part 2- The plan) appeared first on Salty Life Mom.