Quick story about taking my young boys camping for the first time..

Little backstory: the only show on TV that we watch in our house is 'Alone', where 10 contestants get dropped in the bush with 10 items to see who can last the longest. My 2 young sons both especially like the show and have been wanting to go backcountry camping for the first time so they can pack their 10 items and give it a go.
Also about a year ago I found a kids book called "Adventures in Big Thicket" that they've been reading before bed for months. It combines southeast Texas folklore with the wisdom of Solomon, and tells tales of a variety of woodland and marsh animal characters.

So for the younger one's birthday we made the 4+ hour trek to the Big Thicket in eastern Texas to camp and look for some of their favorite creatures from the book.

The timing wasn't great since it's summer and the humidity was almost 100%, all of the creeks and rivers were in flood state bc of so much rain, but we had a great time!

We searched for gators, my older son ran over a snake on his bike (and spotted a bunch of others), we made an all night fire with soggy wood and cooked barbacoa tacos

We found carnivorous plants (4 of the 5 species of north America are there)

Aftet a few nights we ended up coming home with about 100 mosquito and chigger bites, and finally found a gator the last day (the boys named it Old Gus like from the book). They were so stoked!

I'll say they took the good and the bad parts in stride, and we plan to go back in fall hunting season and bring bows & arrows. Any camping from here on will feel like glamping to them lol

Upon return we had a birthday party for the younger one with all his friends. The boys kissed the floor of the house when they walked in, and had a whole new appreciation for air conditioning and bug/reptile free spaces :)

#camping #bigthicket #dadstr #alone #storytime