Cabin camping is a great way to wean the family into regular tent camping. This is where you stay in a cabin camping park that has all the same amenities and things that regular camping does but you still have the access to a bed and showers and things like that. If you are taking a family vacation soon you might consider staying in cabin camping parks instead of jumping right into tents on the cold hard ground. Your family may need time to get used to the outdoorsy things like bugs and cold air. They will get to experience these things by staying in a cabin but not at the magnitude that they would in a tent. Family vacations are such a special time and you don’t want to ruin everyone’s experience by shocking them with regular camping if they have never experienced something like this before. Besides cabin camping parks, some alternatives to camping that you could do are:

Hotel Camping
Don’t give up on this, keep reading and you’ll understand. If real, in-a-tent camping is what you are gearing up for, then this might be a good way to see if your family can handle it. Pick a hotel near a mountain range or a forest where there are lots of outdoor activities for everyone to take part in. This way, you can spend the nights under your normal circumstances but the days are for outdoors. You can engage in activities like mountain biking, fishing, water sports, scavenger hunts and whatever else you would normally do during the day while camping in an actual camp site. If your family gets squeamish at the things they see in the forest or mountains during the day, you may want to reconsider the whole camping idea all together, even the cabin camping parks plan.

Cycle Tour
These kinds of vacations are pretty strenuous and require your family to be in fairly good physical health. Of course, you can gauge how far you cycle and how bumpy the terrain by the health your family is in. The whole idea is like a road trip on bicycles. You still stay in motels along the way to rest but the days are spent cycling along the countryside or beaches or other scenic areas. The nice thing about a cycle tour done with just your family is that you can choose your own route and you can pace yourselves according to your own abilities.

Mattress Camping
If you do insist on sleeping in the outdoors, the least you can do for your family is bring air mattresses that fit inside everyone’s tents. Ensure that your tents have no holes or slits that unwanted creepy crawlies could get in through before leaving for your vacation. Once you are at your campsite, set up the tents, always keeping them firmly zipped up and blow up the air mattresses to stick inside them. While this is still outdoor camping, your family will not be subjected to sleeping on the cold, hard ground with nothing between them except a flimsy sleeping bag and a pillow.

You have to remember that the outdoors aren’t for everyone and that’s okay. You can only ask them to try it out, if they hate it, you may have to come to a compromise. However, you will have a lot more luck if you try one of these ideas that will slowly introduce the family to the outdoor life of camping. You may have loved it growing up but that’s no guarantee that your kids are going to enjoy it also even if you’re staying in cabin camping parks. You have to remember not to take this personally. Everyone has their own opinions and just because your kids don’t enjoy something that you did when you were young, is no reflection on how they feel about you.

You could put it to a vote if you don’t want to go through the other types of vacations first. Your family may surprise you and decide they want to give regular camping a shot and then you’ll be good to go. Make sure to leave a lot of time for activities during the day so that they can see how fun camping is.