I've lost my love of camping with the pop-up

In hindsight, I realize we grew up not so well off. Even though we had very used cars, we still went camping. Of course it was in a tent as there's no way we could afford a motel. By the time I was 8 or 9, I was helping out my dad out around camp: getting the tent up and down, laying out and rolling up the sleeping bags, etc. By the time I was 12, I was helping with pre-trip packing and post-trip storing. During those years, we travelled to most of the western states, the Canadian Rockies, and saw many of the great national parks. Once I was in Boy Scouts, my dad would even go on backpacking trips. He got a case of frostbite on one winter trip where we dug and slept in snow caves. All this came to an end when my parents divorced when I was 14 and my father moved away.

It was only many years later that the truth came out. Camping was my mothers idea. She loved to travel and on my dad's teachers salary, camping was the only option. My father hated camping. But never did he let on to either of us kids that he did. He was willing to do something he didn't like just so we would have these great experiences and memories. I remember only a few of the gifts I received at Christmas and on my birthday, but the greatest gift of all wasn't a thing but rather the love of camping and the outdoors given to me by a father who didn't like to camp at all.

So get your kids involved in the process and realize that you may be giving your kids great experiences that far outweigh any material thing you might buy them.