Next week will be our first camping trip of the season and with that comes the pre-requisite checking of the weather.  As this post goes live chance of rain is 40% which means it’s time to follow the Boy Scout motto and, “be prepared”.

Camping in the rain is the reality of camping: you have only so many weekends between Mother’s Day and Halloween (our un-official season) and none of us want to give up even one of those special nights.  My wife and I were both avid campers before we had kids and we both had our fair share of “camping in the rain” stories.

On our first camping trip with our daughter six years ago, we had in tow four kids and three grownups.  It was also our first trip with our new friends in the building.  I think both families were as surprised as the other that we actually turned months of camping talk into an actual camping trip.  The kids, all under the age of seven, could not have been more excited, as it was to be their first outdoor overnight.

That trip was monumental in many ways mostly because it was the beginning of a friendship between families that will surely be life long and together we have taken tons of trips since.  What also made that first trip special: it rained.

As with anything, you learn from your mistakes and while we made a few, we were better for it.  Among the many, here are a few golden rules for camping in the rain.

• Never put your wife in a one man tent you haven’t used before
• Bring more than one tarp
• Know your knots and bring rope, lots of it
• Have a change of clothes, at the very least fresh socks
• Make sure the soles of your boots are still attached to the shoe, if not bring duct tape
• and lastly… ramen is a SuperFood

We all still laugh about these lessons learned mostly because in the end no one suffered too much.  The story doesn’t end there. Where the trip really redeemed itself was the next day.

After an early dawn wake up, we all agreed that breakfast at a diner might be cheating but we didn’t care.  As we drove along that quiet country road we were thrilled and surprised when a full grown bear rumbled across the road right in front of us.  No emergency maneuvers were required but the bear certainly seemed as surprised as we were.  I am willing to go so far as to say that he had the bear equivalent of toilet paper stuck to his paw as he ran into the woods on the other side of the road.   I guess that does answer that age old rhetorical question about where a bear goes, apparently it’s not in the woods but on the side of the road.  Despite the feeling of embarrassment (for the bear) we were all super excited as it was the kids first wild bear sighting.

From there it was off to the diner and after a pile of pancakes (that I am convinced were the best I ever had in my life), we decided to visit a local attraction called Bushkill Falls.  This 300 acres private park dubbed The Niagara of Pennsylvania,  features two miles of hiking trails and eight spectacular waterfalls, which of course were made all that much better by the rain.

Bushkill Falls 2009

We are now well prepared for any weather and always plan ahead.  Secretly one member of our team actually likes preparing for the rain as it’s an opportunity to put a few seasons worth of Survivorman, Naked Castaway and Dual Survival to the test.

A weekend out in the rain has its pros and cons, but nothing that a good tarp, a stoked fire and a warm beverage can’t solve.  Last piece of advice: you may want to bring an extra roll of TP in a ziplock bag… just in case you see that same bear.