Introduction & camping with kids?

[katherinekay]

Hi everyone,

I've been reading this forum for a little while and am trying to convince my husband that we should buy a pop-up camper. We bought a truck and camper shell when we got married and happily camped in it all over California -- we like to rock climb and hike, so it worked great to explore the national forests and parks, and make our way to the boulders. I have enjoyed reading the trip reports you guys have posted, especially from the Eastside as it's one of the most beautiful places I have spent time. We are now in East Tennessee, which is pretty in its own right, but I do miss the Sierras and coast.

We now have a baby and a 3-year-old and that is a few too many people for the back of the truck. I was wondering how many of you use a FWC or ATC with kids and how well it works? Is there enough space for a family of four to sleep and eat? We have a 2003 Tundra Access Cab 4x4, so I've been looking at the FWC Hawk online. Any advice? Thanks so much! You all seem like a great group.

I know you guys like photos, so below are a few, even though there is no pop-up camper yet....

Katherine

 

[kcowyo]

Hello Katherine, welcome to the forum -

I have an 8 year old son and a 4 year old daughter (whose middle name is Katherine ) and we make it work ok. I have joked to other parents that we are limited not so much by the camper's available space, but by my own patience.

Truthfully I find the space in the backseat of the truck more limiting that the room in the camper. We usually eat outside unless the weather turns on us, and then the kids eat up on the bed while we dine down below. I would say 4 of you with a baby could sleep in the Hawk bed well enough. It'll be snug for now, but in time the oldest and/or a parent can always sleep on the bench.

Like everything else, camping with the kids takes some compromising, some sharing and some patience. As parents we just make it work somehow, right? Keep nudging your husband. If he comes around, he'll likely be really glad he did in the long run. I bought my FWC for the primary reason of taking my kids out, but without the agony of dealing with a wet ground tent. Best decision I've made in relation to getting them outdoors.

A sidenote, I lived over in Morristown several years back while working in Knoxville. I miss the area. Has your family started to glow from all of the nuclear activity in Oak Ridge?

Hope to hear that you're an owner soon.

- KC
.

 

[ScottBailey]

Uh...

We now have a baby and a 3-year-old and that is a few too many people for the back of the truck. I was wondering how many of you use a FWC or ATC with kids and how well it works? Is there enough space for a family of four to sleep and eat? We have a 2003 Tundra Access Cab 4x4, so I've been looking at the FWC Hawk online. Any advice? Thanks so much! You all seem like a great group.

Great pics, thanks!

One thing I would have done different is to go for the Grandby size camper: more space! This might not be realistic on your truck, though...

Our little guy (now 18 months) won't tolerate bedding or co-sleeping. Our tent camping experiences with him were miserable! So we purchased an expensive furnace for the back of our truck. This allows us to camp in most weather.

Go [thread=1448]here[/thread] to see a history of my setup. We now have 6 trips totaling 8 nights in our camper. We are still "figuring it out", but we made the right choice with our purchase.

The little guy sleeps in a cheap infant travel bed that straps securely to the seat. We sleep him on the seat so he is above the level of risk for a propane leak. I put our clothing duffels on the floor so he has something soft to fall on if he decides to climb out. This works great for us, he is warm and safe.

Also, we have both the extended slide out and extended cab-over for our bed making it HUGE: 80x80. You can get this mod in the FWC and have a 76x80ish size bed. If you co-sleep, this is the way to go, if not the extended cab-over and short slide is plenty.

Our camper came with a couch and table. My wife refused to do any meal prep with anyone in the camper. I don't blame her, there just isn't that much room. At her insistence, I recently converted our camper to a [thread=1677]dinette[/thread]. On the dinette's inaugural voyage, my wife happily did some meal prep while I, the little guy, and his 11 YO sister sat in the camper and talked/played: it was still tight, but it was now do-able to have 4 people recreating inside. (FYI: FWC is building a 2 person dinette; however, it is not--in my esteem--as functional for a family as mine is. With a camp stool, we easily fit 4 adults at our dinette.)

Having the camper not only makes it possible for us to get out, but makes it much easier to go. My prep is: power the fridge (starts cool down) and charge the battery Thursday night; load the fridge, rinse and fill the water tank, throw clothes duffels in the camper Friday night, and travel Saturday morning.

Let me suggest, before you pull the trigger on a purchase, consider pop-up tent trailers. If you don't spend much time off-road, they may suit your specific needs better... Certainly they'll have more floor space.

As a start, that's my $0.02....

Tell us more about how you want to camp and we'll give you more ideas...

 

[craig333]

Sorry, no kids, just a dog, but looking at your pictures it seems you're like most of us. Former tenters, car/shell people. Of those who have made the conversion I don't a single one has regretted it.

Tent trailers are nice, but not if you really want to hit the backroads.

 

[mtn-high]

Welcome to WTW, katherine. I find it WAYYY cool that we have a lady here pushing her husband for a camper! You could easily be an angel to some of these guys, I'm sure... LOL. (I'm fortunate, my wife was in on the game from the start)

A pop up, huh Scott?

Hmmmmm.....I'm still raising kids (*men*) but they are old enough (16/19) now that the days of holding them captive on family trips as we did when they were "younger" is disappearing rapidly. As a result, we've been looking at one of these tow-along models to pull behind the Tundra/Hawk combo...

good luck in your search!

mtn

 

[DLN]

Katherine,

Welcome aboard. I can't help you with camping with kids info as the only two we have is each other, but keep pushing for the FWC and you'll never regret it, we sure haven't. All the best.

 

[ScottBailey]

A pop up, huh Scott?


It's all about the right tool for the job. It is irresponsible to blindly extole the virtues of our campers in the face of their deficiencies!

In terms of space, something potentially desirable for a family with a baby that needs a safe place to crawl around, the FWC is lacking.

The truck camper advantage is an increase in drive-ability and off-road-ability.

I stumbled onto FWC while researching trailers. I love the ATC.

 

[pods8]

If you feel like being handy stay tuned on whether the "do everything couch" I'm trying to put together for my hawk works or is a failure... haha. My intention for it is to ideally cater to two people and handle 4 when called upon.

However for the record we've had 4 adults playing cards in the camper (bed down sitting in the bed corners) and 2 large dogs chilling up in the bunk. However booze and it being cold outside make people tolerate confined spaces a lot more so not sure how you want to handle that one with the kids.

Also we'll eventually be doing the kid thing here and its my hope having something a bit more stable and climate adjusted will allow us to keep getting out with young ones compared to just tenting.

 

[Marc]

Hi Katherine

I think you will get plenty of informative feed back to your questions.
That really is a nice truck you guys have and is just begging for an ATC/Four Wheel camper. Check out the classifieds, their are some good deals to be had. If I were to do it again I would go with the Shell and extended cab over. This gives you lots of options. Welcome to WTW.

marc

 

[Tomas Tierra]

Nice Truck...

We have the same model, with a FWC Ranger on the back(8 foot camper, not as wide as the hawk)..A 3y/o, a 9y/o, and the Wifesky sleep up top on the bunk.I sleep down below on a slightly modified couch/bed..It works out fine for us..We rarely spend any time inside the camper.Do not bring the table with us, useless.Have not really been caught in any weather to speak of with the kids.

Your kids will love the camper! It's like a clubhouse.

Good luck with Hubby, and welcome to the forum

TT

 

[katherinekay]

Thanks, everyone, for all the replies!

KC - It's good to hear that you make it work with two older kids. I hadn't considered that 4 could fit in the Hawk bed while the kids are little enough. And with the couch available when needed, it seems like it should be enough -- still more room than in a backpacking tent, right? Oh -- and we do live in Oak Ridge! They tell us not to eat the deer....

The backseat space in the truck does seem like an issue, and we have thought about getting a crew cab truck sooner than later. Part of me thinks that the kids should be able to deal with the upright seats and lack of leg room till they're 10 or so, and part of me thinks we might as well make it more comfortable sooner than later.

But, if we got a crew cab truck, we'd probably end up with a bigger truck overall, which is not as convenient for daily driving and gets worse gas mileage.... It's too bad the Tundra crew cab only comes with a really short bed. From what I can tell, the same is true of the Silverado 1500.

And then I think, well, if we go ahead and get a bigger truck, then maybe we should get an 8' bed and a bigger camper like a Grandby....

And that starts sounding more expensive and big, and I think, we should be able to manage with our Tundra for a while and a Hawk-sized camper would be just fine for the essentials.

Scott - I didn't realize you could get the extended cab and extended slide-out! That's a good pointer. I like the dinette you built a lot -- maybe by the time we get around to buying a camper, FWC or ATC will offer one similar to it stock....

I have looked into pop-up trailers or regular trailers as well, but they seem really limiting because don't you basically have to camp in a real campground with one? Plus they look like a pain to set up and take down. We like to be able to just drive down a dirt road in a national forest and camp someplace that looks nice and quiet, and we like to go places you couldn't pull a trailer. By the time we get a camper (I'm thinking positive here), the baby (10 months now) will be a toddler.

It's useful to hear what your camping prep is. A big part of my motivation to get a camper is to make it easy for us to get out. Do you leave your camper mostly stocked with everything but perishable food and clothes? I'd like to think leaving for a weekend of camping is simpler than planning a weekend trip in a hotel... (I find staying in hotels with two little kids not much fun at all.)

mnt - Love that picture. My dad would have loved one of those for my sister and me....

pods8 - Your do-everything couch sounds great, although I don't think we're going to have time for projects of that magnitude anytime soon.

TT - It's good to see another Tundra just like ours. What motivated you to get a Ranger over a Hawk? Or a Grandby? I'm glad to hear another vote for kids loving it.

Thanks everyone for all the great feedback!

Katherine

 

[ScottBailey]

It's useful to hear what your camping prep is. A big part of my motivation to get a camper is to make it easy for us to get out. Do you leave your camper mostly stocked with everything but perishable food and clothes? I'd like to think leaving for a weekend of camping is simpler than planning a weekend trip in a hotel... (I find staying in hotels with two little kids not much fun at all.)


Ha ha! I find staying in hotels all around annoying!

Our camper is as ready to go as possible. Camping utensils, paper plates, a few pans, a shovel, axe, hatchet, bedding, camp chairs, an empty cooler (I fill it before we leave) all of it is stored inside the camper. When we get to the site, I level the truck (legos), pop the top, pull out the cooler, chairs, and shovel, through the bedding on the upper bed and that's that!

Our duffel bags--inside the house--already have some of our camping clothes and most of our toiletries ready to go. It still takes a while to get ready, but it's not as bad as tenting!

 

[Tomas Tierra]

KK,

I went for the Ranger because I got a GREAT DEAL from a guy right down the street (user Chnlisl/Jay)..I really dig the streamline aspect of the Ranger on the Tundra.

If you end up with a Hawk or Grandby,GET THE EXTENDED CAB OVER OPTION!!! You do not want to be sleeping side to side with kids up there..

Good Luck, and keep us "posted"

TT

 

[jimjxsn]

Hi Katherine,

Like TT, I have a Ranger on a Tundra.

We've had a popup trailer, a small 20 ft. trailer and a 23 ft hybrid trailer with ends that folded out and a side out sofa. But I never really got into the RV scene and prefer not to be limited to developed campgrounds. Our last trailer just got to the point where it wasn't used very much. The flip side is that there is much more room in a trailer.
My kids are older (high school and college) and when all four of us go camping together the kids sleep in a tent. When we go with just my daughter, she sleeps on the sofa. There really isn't enough room for four adults in my Ranger.
The Tundra handles the Ranger just great. When I was looking for one of these campers, the Ranger was what I found. I would have gotten a Hawk or an Eagle but my wife liked the extra bench in the Ranger that holds a portapotti.

Best of luck to you. Enjoy those kids while you can, there's not nearly enough time before they are grown up.

 

[craig333]

one of the best things about our campers is going on a whim. Clothes and food is all i need to add for a weekend. Longer and you need to think about actuallly planning. The more I see your posts, the more I"m sure an fwc/atc is the way to go for you. Kids adapt. Its the parents that might have issues.

 

[katherinekay]

Thanks, guys. It really does help to hear how you use your campers with kids (of all ages) in tow. My husband is theoretically on board for getting a camper sometime -- he likes the FWC/ATC campers -- now I just need to persuade him it will be fun to camp while the kids are still little. I'll keep you posted.....

 

[Vanderpooch]

I sent you a PM
J

 

[ScottBailey]

My husband is theoretically on board for getting a camper sometime -- he likes the FWC/ATC campers -- now I just need to persuade him it will be fun to camp while the kids are still little.

It's hard to camp with a little one: you pack so much extra stuff--like toys, diapers--and sometimes, it's just doesn't matter: they just aren't happy. They don't sleep as well as at home, it's hard to keep them entertained in the confines of the camper and campground. Keeping a little one out of the fire! For every happy picture of my littlest camper, I'm sure I have a frustrated one.

Is it all worth it?

Well, yes, sharing our wonder and love for nature, and nurturing this same appreciation in our children is worth much, much more than our suffering!

The FWC/ATC sounds like it will suit your camping style, I look forward to seeing the eventual pics of it on your truck!

Yay!

 

[masterplumber]

We've had our old Granby for I think 5 -7 years now - it all blends together when the kids start growing. We always eat outside unless the weather is crummy as the aisle space is at a premium with people on the couch. now that the boys are older (14 & 16) they usually stay in a tent but when the were younger they slept on the couch facing opposite ends & the wife & I slept up top. I really like the newer extended cabover & extended slider but we don't have those & make it work. We did years of tent camping & truck topper camping & we changed to a camper for the same reason - it's just a whole lot easier with the kids so we go more. Mine stays on the truck most of the time so we end up using it for lots of things like a changing room while sking or a place to hang out away from the wind & enjoy lunch while at a 4H shooting competition. If you get one you won't regret it - I may get a newer one someday & try to find some other features but I can't imagine not having one in the future anytime.

 

[craig333]

Bring the kids. The bad memories soon get out weighed by the good ones. My dad took me camping as soon as I can remember. I remember the trips we froze, forgot the tent poles, insect attacks and what not, but I also remember learning my appreciation for nature and the great outdoors.
I feel so sorry for kids that never get out and adventure.