My daughter and I started camping when she was a young Girl Scout, when I tagged along as a chaperone to help the troop leaders. Over the past decade, however, we’ve developed a passion for spending time in the woods.

We’ll be meeting friends over Memorial Day Weekend for an annual summer camping adventure. Destination: a campgrounds in Virginia.  Accommodations: a rustic cabin.  Amenities: the sounds of nature, cooking over the campfire, long walks, time to stare at the nighttime sky. Inconveniences: plenty, but they’re minor in comparison to the good times.

We’ve been a part of several  camping groups over the years.  One group included more than two dozen families; we traveled annually to campgrounds up and down the East Coast; we always slept in tents. The families were split into teams to prepare the meals, so a friendly competition developed over the food. Let’s just say that the meals were hardly hamburgers and hot dogs. It was close to being gourmet – pancakes with fruit topping for breakfast, hummus and vegetable sandwiches for lunch, several kinds of chili for dinner, for example. We camped, rain or shine.

Our other camping excursions have been with a small group of mothers and daughters who have gathered every summer for more than a decade at a favorite  campground in Maryland. Our girls are best friends. The moms have become sistah-friends. But during those adventures, we opted to forego sleeping on the ground and turned to small, rustic cabins.

As my 15-year-old daughter and I were making plans to move to North Carolina last year, we knew we didn’t want our camping tradition to end. So we’re meeting another mom and her daughter this weekend. My daughter and I have already started recalling stories from past outings, and we’re looking forward to telling scary stories, roasting marshmallows and maybe floating down a river again on a tube. This year, the girls have something else look forward to: They’ll be able to do more of the cooking.

What are some of your favorite camping memories?

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