We both work at a small Christian school in Mesa, Arizona and have known each other for many years. (In case you are looking for a great school, check out Faith Christian School - we love it!) Employees are like family, so when Jennie got her trailer, she of course began to share her adventures with the staff. It turned out that as she shared, she discovered that many people on the staff were campers too!
Some were tent campers. Some had pop-ups. Some had fifth-wheels. Some were dreaming about camping. Jennie threw out the idea of a group camping trip in the summer and a few jumped in and a reservation was made. We went to Fool Hollow Lake in Showlow, Arizona. It is an absolutely gorgeous campground. We reserved 3 sites and between the trailers and the tenters and all the kids we had a group of 25 people and we had an absolute blast! In fact, before we left we reserved sites for the next year.
There are several benefits in camping with a group of friends.
1. All the kids end up with a buddy just their size. They run around together and parents don't have to come up with a bunch of ideas to keep the kids busy. They keep each other busy - in fact, they wear each other out and they sleep really well.
2. Our kids learn things we can't teach them. We are not fishermen, but several of our friends are and they love to teach our kids. On this trip, our kids learned to fish for crawdads and had a great time fishing the lake with people who know fishing. Now Jennie's boys rarely agree to camp somewhere there is no fishing available.
3. We get great ideas from each other. We've both learned to organize our trailers better. We are constantly taking tours of each other's trailers and seeing what has changed from one trip to the next. Since Kimber is a single mom she is able to ask the friends' husbands for assistance on trailer issues and repairs.
4. FOOD!!! The biggest benefit yet! We get to share food, recipes, and meals together.
5. It's not just the kids that like to play together. It has been so much fun to learn new games, sit around the campfire, take hikes, and ride bikes together. Life is just better when you experience it with other people.
One of the best things about our group is that we allow each other the freedom to do what we want. If someone wants to go take nap, they can! If they want to spend the whole afternoon reading a book, that's o.k. too! There can be times we are together and times we are on our own.
Camping with friends is the best! We enjoy it so much and we love that our camping group gets bigger and better every year!
Would you camp with your co-workers?
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