Camping with kids doesn’t require the perfect RV, expensive outdoor gear or a perfectly planned family adventure. Sometimes it starts with a borrowed tent, a pair of hand-me-down boots and simply deciding to get outside.
Our Guest
Natalie Vereen Davis
Natalie Vereen-Davis is the creator of CampingKiddos, a family camping and outdoor travel resource helping parents explore campgrounds, state parks, national parks and road trips with their kids. She joins Sierra Rec Now host Charlie Pankey as part of the Built Outside series—conversations with people whose lives outdoors helped shape what they built—to talk about family camping, RV travel, raising adventurous kids and turning a lifelong connection to the outdoors into a growing family travel business.
Natalie’s own camping story started young. She grew up traveling in her grandparents’ old Grumman motorhome before eventually becoming a tent camper, pop-up camper owner and RV traveler with a family of her own.
Some of her strongest childhood memories came from a trip to California when she was six, including Yosemite National Park, Big Sur and the giant sequoias. Decades later, her son’s fascination with seeing the biggest trees in the world brought Natalie back to California for a family road trip through Pinnacles National Park, Yosemite, Kings Canyon and Sequoia National Park.
But this conversation isn’t just about where to take kids camping.
Natalie and Charlie explore what children can teach adults about experiencing the outdoors, why the best family travel memories aren’t always the ones parents planned, and how camping can teach kids to become comfortable with being uncomfortable.
They also talk about Natalie’s journey from English professor and part-time travel blogger to taking CampingKiddos full time, the realities of creating outdoor content while protecting the family experience, and why she believes families should start small instead of comparing themselves to the polished version of outdoor life they see online.
Her advice for families wanting to start camping with kids is refreshingly simple: take baby steps. Try a nearby state park. Spend a night at a campground. Let the kids help set up camp. Learn outdoor skills together. Build confidence one adventure at a time.
Camping With Kids: Start Small and Build Confidence
For families wondering how to start camping with kids, Vereen-Davis doesn’t recommend beginning with a major national park trip or a long backcountry adventure. Her advice is much simpler: start with whatever feels small to your family.
For one family, that might mean spending the night at a nearby campground for the first time. For a family already comfortable with tent camping, the next step might be hiking a mile into a campsite and seeing how everyone handles carrying gear and sleeping farther from the car.
The point isn’t how difficult the adventure is. It’s giving the family enough room to learn without making the first experience overwhelming.
Vereen-Davis sees state parks as one of the best places for families to begin. They’re often close to home, relatively inexpensive and provide an opportunity to practice the basic rhythms of camping before committing to a bigger trip. natalie-charlie(3)
That progression—from simply trying camping to eventually identifying yourself as a camper, hiker or outdoor family—is one of the larger themes of our conversation.
You Don’t Have to Look “Outdoorsy”
There is another barrier Natalie wants families to get past: the idea that outdoor adventure only counts when it looks big.
Camping doesn’t have to mean the Sierra Nevada, the Rockies or an ambitious backcountry trip. A local state park counts. A campground counts. Your first night sleeping in a tent counts.
That matters when introducing children to the outdoors because confidence comes through experience. Start with something manageable, figure out what works for your family, and then decide whether you’re ready to go farther the next time.
It’s a refreshingly different approach to camping with kids: don’t start by asking how adventurous your family should be. Start where your family is today.
What Kids Teach Us About Family Camping
One of my favorite threads in this conversation was how differently kids experience a camping trip.
As parents, we can become focused on destinations, itineraries and the things we’re convinced our kids are supposed to remember. Kids have a habit of disrupting all of that.
Sometimes they’re more interested in a creek beside the trail, an interesting rock, sticks around the campground or simply playing outside than whatever attraction the adults planned for the day.
For Natalie, that curiosity isn’t something that needs to be hurried along. It’s part of the experience.
And maybe that’s one of the hidden benefits of camping with children: they make adults slow down and experience a place differently too.
From Tent Camping to RV Travel With Kids
Natalie’s family camping experience didn’t begin with an expensive RV.
When she and her husband were newly married, they borrowed camping equipment—her brother-in-law’s tent, her mother’s boots and whatever other gear they could put together—and tent camped for years. They eventually bought an older pop-up camper that Natalie renovated before later moving into a hard-sided camper that made longer family road trips easier. natalie-charlie(3)
It’s another useful lesson for families researching how to start camping: you don’t necessarily need to buy your ideal camping setup before you know what kind of camping your family enjoys.
Tent camping, pop-up campers and RV camping each provide a different experience. Natalie’s family grew into its current style by actually getting outside and learning what worked for them.
National Parks and State Parks for Families
Natalie has traveled extensively with her family, so before we finished our conversation I asked her to name five national park or state park experiences she thinks families should consider.
Her choices reveal just how broad a family outdoor trip can be.
Glacier National Park made the list, along with Kings Canyon National Park, which Natalie calls the surprise of her family’s California trip. After visiting Yosemite, Kings Canyon and Sequoia, she came away particularly impressed by Kings Canyon and eager to return.
She also grouped Utah’s Mighty Five national parks together after her family spent roughly a month exploring Utah and still felt they could have stayed longer.
But one of her recommendations wasn’t a national park at all. Kodachrome Basin State Park near Bryce Canyon gave her family the colorful Utah landscape without the same crowds they encountered around the better-known national park.
For an East Coast choice, Natalie recommends New River Gorge National Park in West Virginia, another destination she believes families shouldn’t overlook. natalie-charlie(3)
Natalie’s Family Adventure Picks
- Glacier National Park
- Kings Canyon National Park
- Utah’s Mighty Five
- Kodachrome Basin State Park
- New River Gorge National Park
Those destinations span very different landscapes, but they connect back to Natalie’s larger philosophy: there isn’t one correct way to be an outdoor family.
The Bigger Lesson: Raise Curious Kids
Maybe the word that best describes Natalie’s approach isn’t adventurous.
It’s curious.
That’s how she describes her own family. Camping gives kids permission to investigate the things adults might walk past—the rocks, sticks, trees, water and whatever else catches their attention.
That curiosity can eventually lead to bigger hikes, longer camping trips, national parks or cross-country RV adventures.
But it doesn’t have to start there.
Start small. Let them explore. Learn together. Then see where your family wants to go next.
Learn more about Natalie Vereen-Davis and CampingKiddos at CampingKiddos.com.
Sierra Rec Now — Built Outside
Conversations with people whose lives outside taught them how to build something.
