Back in July of 2020, Julie and I purchased our camper van and it was one of the best decisions we've made for our family. Or at least that's what I think. Admittedly, I'm probably the one who's derived the most benefit from "Chuggy" (affectionately nicknamed after our late dog, Fiona). Almost 5 years and 60,000 miles in, I wanted to outline some of the experiences Chuggy has enabled for us, some of which were unexpected benefits.
I'll be covering our different camping "use cases" over a series of posts.
1-Nighters
The immediate benefit to our family's quality time was just how easy it became to do 1-night camping trips. We're fortunate to have a beautiful county campground nearby (Sanborn Park) and I was taking the girls tent camping there regularly. Even though it was a short distance, the logistics of hauling gear, setting up camp, being prepared to care for 2 young children, and breaking it all down all added overhead such that it often felt hard to justify all the hassle just for 1 night. But the beauty of the 1-nighter is it's low commitment, we can still have space for other activities over the weekend, and if someone's having a bad time, it's easy enough to bail.
Once we got Chuggy, the overhead for camping prep went down significantly. We learned what items we needed for camping (cooking supplies, bedding, etc.) and those items just live in the van full time. This lowered the barrier for impromptu trips. Imagine it's Friday afternoon, I'm at the office and we decide: "let's camp tonight", and it happens. It's played out like this on countless occasions, and these nights ended up quite special. Low pressure, internet/screen-free family time, and I'm not cooked from the labor of hauling gear and setting up a tent.
Over the past 5 years, we've hit up Santa Clara County Parks for camping at least 25 times for these short trips (according to my reservations history), with our favorites ranked: Sanborn, Mt. Madonna, Uvas Canyon, Joseph Grant, Coyote Lake. Our county parks have been a great "entry" point to camping, relatively accessible with availability on short notice. I owe it to the the SCC Parks system for getting our kids used to being in nature.
I'll cover the following use cases in future posts:
- En Route
- Sno Park
- Retreats
- Mountain Biking
- Day trips
- Remote Work
- Epic Quests