First Time Campers in Israel: Thank G-d for Facebook

I am so excited to be taking my husband camping for the very first time in his life, and thank you Zionism for convincing him that camping really is the best way to get in touch with your environment. So as this
is my first camping trip in Israel, and his first camping trip ever, we did the very Israeli thing of checking with everybody on Facebook and Whatsapp for recommendations, instead of taking 5 minutes to just
Google it ourselves. A great resource  is the facebook group, Family Camping in Israel. So now that our friends have planned our camping trip for us, I thought I would pass along my few words of wisdom about healthy living and camping from my years of experience camping around the state of California.

My vegetarian mum set a great example for how to pack a healthy picnic on a camping trip. We would always pack a large cooler full of the freshest carrots, cucumbers, cherry tomatoes, colorful peppers and summer fruits from the Farmer’s Market when we set out on our adventures. She always bought hard boiled eggs, cans of tuna fish, wholegrain bread from our favorite bakery and string cheese and we always had plenty of popcorn, potatoes and fresh corn for the barbeque pit. The rest was up to my dad who had the challenging task of catching enough fresh fish for our dinner. There were times when we
ended up hitting the local fish market after a slow day with the fishing rod. As much as we might have missed potato chips, pretzels and junk food, we felt the trade off of nightly s’mores, and fresh cook food was well worth the price.

For those weeks every summer, we had the full attention of both my parents, who usually were working full time, and this is part of the reason why I am so excited about this summer’s camping experience with my family. Now that my husband and I are so busy, it is such a gift to spend real time together as a family, in nature eating natural, healthy food and I can’t wait for my kids to build the same kinds of memories I have, with us, this summer, here in Israel.