New camper struggling with the logic of family car camping

Seeking Advice
1

Help me understand what we’re doing wrong please!

Some background:

Grew up in NYC, moved to Oregon to have a family and trying to get into camping. This is only my second time camping, both times with my 4 yr old and two other families (very experienced campers) with kids.

The whole appeal of camping for my wife and I is getting away from people and into nature, so standard public campsites with tons of neighbors don’t make sense to us. With young children, backpacking seems like a challenging alternative. So we’ve been looking for more spread out Hipcamp spots (with some basic camp services) to car camp.

The issue:

It feels like soooo much work for the payoff. So much gear, so much prep ahead of the trip for meals, so much packing, unpacking, assembly, disassembly, cleanup, mediocre (at best) sleep, rough bathroom and cleanliness, etc.

Don’t get me wrong, I enjoyed our hikes, camp cooking, time around the campfire, the fresh air and watching the kids have a ball. I’m just not sure that the juice is worth the squeeze and it makes me sad, because there’s so much I like about it conceptually.

I know I’m a noob camper and I’m sure theres a fair amount of user error, so I’d love some advice from campers, especially those who have done it with younger kids. Thanks!

-Edit: Thanks for all the replies! Some key takeaways: bring less stuff, plan simpler meals, get my camping bins organized and complete, do more research on campgrounds because the good ones are worth the trade-offs to have access to all the services. Thanks! :pray:

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Packing and unpacking your camping gear is simplified when it is all kept in bins, leaving only clothing and food to be moved about. We bought a teardrop trailer to go one step further. All we need to do is gather our belongings, including clothing and food, attach the trailer to our minivan, and drive away.

Having said that, traveling anyplace with children is essentially “parenting somewhere else,” so things won’t feel as simple or relaxed until the children are older and more self-sufficient. Compared to when they were toddlers, our current teenagers are a very different story. Keep going. They will value the pleasant recollections.

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I read this somewhere and it really resonated with me. Camping just adds an extra layer of fun.

“Vacation with kids isn’t vacation. It’s an away game. In the rain. At high altitude. And you’re losing.”

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So the tough part of it is that we’ve vacationed plenty already with our daughter and she’s easy and fun to travel with. She’s game for most things and is just generally not a PIA. But camping still felt extra hard for what it was and I can’t take the kids part out of the equation in considering why it felt that way. So while I resonate with the extra layer of fun, it also added a bunch of extra layers of painful logistics. Still thinking on it over here.

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Let me ask this. In your ideal world what would you like the whole experience to be like ?

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I think this is a good question. The mission might not be totally clear. In our group, putting together fun meals is part of the experience. Trying to do that over several days of camping means a lot of prep and stuff. I think paring that down for efficiency would enable more down time and less setup/prep but at the expense of one of the core joys and activities. So it’s hard to figure out if there’s a way to balance that.

Perfect world with no rules, we’re camping in an isolated location with expansive views, eating well, hiking, relaxing comfortably, etc, but with significantly less feeling like we brought our home outdoors and the absurdity of that effort.