Camping Crazy

I am taking a road trip through the state of Florida over spring break - just me and the kids. Am I crazy? Likely, but I'm doing it anyway. Let me 'splain...

There are generally two schools of thought about how much interaction you should have with your kids. One school - I'll call this the "Family Fun" method - is based on spending most of your free time with your kids, usually involved in some craft or activity. Family Fun magazine promotes this mindset, with intricate and time-consuming crafts and activities that usually leave me either cussing or in tears. The goal here is to engage your children in lots of creative, mind-stimulating activities, and to spend lots of "quality time" with them. This will ensure that they have wonderful, life-long memories of your time spent together.

School # 2 - and I'll call this the "John Rosemond" method, basically advocates the "you have more toys than Toys R Us - go find something to do" approach. Also known as the "go outside and play" approach. John Rosemond (a pretty well-known parenting guru) feels pretty strongly that adults were not put on this earth to entertain their children. He believes we are not raising children. We are raising people, and forcing them to entertain themselves and be creative and imaginative on their own is a great way to do that.

I'd like to think I am somewhere in the middle, but in reality I fall closer to the John Rosemond school. More often times than not, I send the kids out to play, or tell them to go find something to do.

So I'm feeling a little guilt that I don't make more of an effort to do cool things with my kids. Disney World aside, of course. And trips to Mexico.

So this is where my idea was born. I love camping. The kids love camping. Bart hates camping. I love exploring and visiting new places and just hitting the road. Bart hates that stuff, unless it involves a golf course and a nice hotel. I USED to - back before I got all grown up - love to just fly by the seat of my pants and head out somewhere. Bart never did that. (God bless the boy, he is the Yin to my Yang...) The kids have a week off for Spring Break, but Bart has to work. Rather than having them here, bouncing off the walls and generally driving me crazy all week, I decided to plan a trip. We have to be in Pensacola at the end of that week anyway for my sorority reunion, so why not take our sweet time getting there?

So - we're spending 2 nights at Aunt Courtney's house, and doing a day at Disney in between. Then we hit the open road. We're heading up to St. Augustine, mainly because I've never been there. We're going to visit the lighthouse and climb to the top. We're going to visit the Castillo de San Marcos. We're going to - OF COURSE -visit the Fountain of Youth. Then we're camping for the night at Anastasia State Park. In a tent.

The next morning, we get up and head west. We're going to Apalachicola, mainly because I've never been there. And because they have the world's best oysters. (The beaches down that way are supposed to be good too...) We're going to the world-famous Papa Joe's Oyster House, where I fully intend to eat as many of the little bivalves as humanly possible. Then we head about 30 minutes west on the coast to camp at St. Joseph's Peninsula State Park. The beach and nature preserve are supposed to be awesome.

The next day, we head north to Marianna to do the Cavern Tour. Now, I have actually done this before, and I thought it was pretty cool. So I'm taking the kids there. We'll have lunch at the park, and then head on to Pensacola. We're making one other minor side trip. On Friday, we're going to The Northwest Florida Zoo (formerly known as The ZOO and Botanical Gardens.) This is the Zoo where I worked for 4 years, and still look back on it as the most fun job I have ever had. It closed down last year for financial reasons, but now it's back open. I want to take my kids there, and show them where I worked. They probably won't appreciate that this was where I got my vast - and mostly useless - knowledge about all things animal. I ll probably tell them how I made friends there that I still have to this day, and how I had to drive my Geo Tracker across the bridge in a Tropical Storm in order to help secure the animals. I might show them the on-site trailer I lived in for 6 months, and tell them how I used to hand-feed and pet Eland every evening after work. I'll tell them how -at my job interview - I was thrown on a safari train to narrate, and then tossed into a cage with a rather ornery King Vulture. It was a great place to work, and I want to support the new ownership. So we're going.

I'm hoping that I can pass on my love of adventure, my love of cheesy tourist attractions, and my love of some unique Floridana to my kids. I hope one day maybe they'll tell their kids about the time mom took them on a road trip through Florida. I'm bringing the DVD player, but it's use will be severly limited. I want the kids to play license plate games, and I Spy, and we'll all sing stupid songs. (Can I get a rousing chorus of "On Top Of Sphagetti", please?) I want it to be more like the road trips families took when I was a kid, complete with Mad Libs and orange soda. We're gonna camp, and ride our bikes, and walk on nature trails. We're gonna do cheesy touristy things and eat ice cream and fly kites at the beach. It's gonna be great.

Bart says I'm nuts. He says it's too much for the kids to do in one week. I think I can handle it, though. We'll stop at Publix every day and get the food for the next 24 hours. If it rains, we'll sleep in my truck. If it rains A LOT, we'll check into a hotel. If we're miserable, we throw in the towel and head straight to Pensacola.

My friend's husband Barry said "Your are such a cool mom. Can you adopt me?" I guess we'll see who is right.

It should make for some amusing stories, and hopefully some good times. Maybe I'll make it an annual thing. I've been dying to take them on a road trip through the Keys (another part of Florida Bart dislikes...) Maybe that will be our Spring Break 2011?

Wish me luck - and happy camping, of course!