Tent Camping in Chester State Park

In May 2020, we took our very first family tent camping trip to Chester State Park. Tent camping was something I did several times growing up and really enjoyed. Andrew’s tent camping experiences were mostly from the military, and I think he considers my idea of camping to be “glamping”.

Nevertheless, as he does with anything I decide we “need” to do, he graciously researched and found us all the things we needed for our experiences. We were pretty sure this was going to be a disaster. Who takes a 6 year old, 4 year old (it was her birthday!) and 1 year old to sleep in a tent in the woods?

Us, apparently.

Day -1

The day before her actual birthday, we presented our almost-four-year-old with a brand new sleeping bag. Her exact words were “I hope we aren’t going camping, because I don’t want to do that.” Off to a great start, as expected.

Day 1

The weather forecast as we approached the campground? 100% chance of thunderstorms. “We” (Andrew) got the tent up JUST in time for us to hide out inside! We inflated the all the air mattresses while we waited on the storm to end. For this trip, the kids each had a twin sized air mattress, and we slept on a tall queen air mattress, which we donated as soon as we came home, if that lets you know how that went.

After the rain stopped, we built a fire to make s’mores. We ate a ton of pre-made and packaged food on this trip, just kind of not really knowing what we were getting ourselves into. I’ll share some more about our “lessons learned” next week!

Day 2

In the morning, we went for a hike. Our first stop was the spillway. We then re-traced our steps and headed toward the day-use area of the park to the playground. This walk was a little longer than we planned, and we had a little diabetes mishap, so Andrew walked back to the campground, grabbed extra insulin and our lunch, while I kept trudging along with the kids. He met us at the playground with the van so we wouldn’t have to walk all the way back. He always saves the day.

We ate our lunches in the air conditioned van (sweet relief!) while parked at the playground. After we had sufficiently cooled ourselves and rested a bit, we decided to brave a last little mini-hike over the boardwalk to the island in the middle of the park.

After exploring the island a little bit (there wasn’t much to see) we headed back to the campsite to hang out. We brought a few games that we played, and the kids also enjoyed racing up and down the hill that was right next to our site. Night 2 was absolutely gorgeous. We got to pull the rain fly off the tent to enjoy the prettiest view.

Day 3

Because we are super smart people and also were convinced this wasn’t going to go well, we only booked 2 nights. Even though we had the best time, I still think two nights was the perfect amount of time to try this out and introduce our kids to this way of vacationing.

So, after breakfast on our second morning, we packed up our site and headed home. It was a really wonderful trip.

We stayed at site #8. This campground was geared toward camper & RV camping, and we were the only tent campers there. All 25 sites have power and water available. It was a good way to get our feet wet, but I definitely think we were a little out of place in our giant tent with our loud kids! The sites did not have tent pads. The bathrooms were super clean, the park was really well-maintained, and it was overall a great experience. The only small disappointment was that because it is such a small park, the park office had really limited hours. We had hoped to rent a pedal boat after hiking, but unfortunately we were in the middle of the woods during the brief time the office was open. Despite that small hiccup to our plans, we had an amazing time, and I booked our next camping trip the night we got home.

Next week, I’ll share some of the lessons we’ve learned and supplies we won’t ever camp without! We now have three camping experiences under our belts, and we’ve learned so much in those trips!