“We aren’t camping.” This, at least, is what we said to ourselves over and over after we moved aboard Take Two, as we justified the expensive upgrades that made our boat a comfortable home and not just a place we carried our stuff to and from on the weekends. When we bought Take Two in 2008, we would drive down to the marina in Bradenton, Florida every Friday when Jay got home from his week of work travel. We would pack clothes, food, bedding, toys and tools and drive an hour and a half with four kids under the age of eight, then unload the stuff into dock carts and carry it all down to the boat. We were practicing everything at once—sailing, docking, anchoring, fixing things that broke, water and power conservation, and becoming more flexible and resilient as we learned a new kind of lifestyle. Then, at the end of the weekend, after we had completed boat projects and kept our four small children alive and occupied, we would pack everything up again and carry it home.

Let me be honest: it was camping. Sometimes the electricity didn’t work correctly, we didn’t have a working hot water heater, the stove was a European electric cooktop that worked on a frequency of 50hz, which meant that it didn’t work in the US, whose grid system delivers 60hz, so cooking was tricky. It was too hot, too cold, too windy, too rainy, too small, and too uncomfortable a lot of the time. But it was also fun, challenging, and a great adventure. It forced us to learn and grow and keep our wits about us. But after we had moved aboard in 2009, then traveled for most of 2010, we found ourselves expecting another child, so, we came back to the dock to have a baby and refit the boat to make it more comfortable for a family of seven. And we were not camping. We installed electric freshwater flushing toilets, a good hot water heater, a washing machine, new galley appliances, new upholstery and table in the salon and new countertops and cabinets in the galley, a new stereo system, and shade awnings for sun protection and privacy in the cockpit. That was just the beginning. We later upgraded the solar power system, battery bank, watermaker, dinghy, engines and generator, hard top over the cockpit, window covers and dodger, cockpit enclosure, refrigeration, and air conditioners, among other things.

For the last fifteen years, we have lived in what feels like a floating palace—perhaps not as posh as a mega-yacht, but a perfectly comfortable home for our family. We have plenty of water, plenty of power, cool conditioned air for hot buggy nights in the tropics, hot showers for the cool nights, comfortable mattresses for a good night’s sleep, a  gas stove, oven, and grill and every necessary kitchen gadget so that we cook and eat whatever we want, and even an ice maker and a blender for those perfect sunset piña-coladas or morning smoothies. We may sleep with our hatch open and have the feeling of being out under the stars and we may be in remote, beautiful locations in the great outdoors, but we are not roughing it.

Living aboard is much more like RV camping, or “glamping,” than primitive tent camping. It gives us a fair amount of adventure travel without all the inconvenience of setting up and tearing down camp every few days. Our boat came with camping gear, but one can only guess what it was for. Perhaps for beach camping or overland trips. We aren’t really sure, and it was old gear that we never used, so we got rid of it. The only camping we have done is in the backyard of a friend’s house, because he was a state park ranger, and our son Sam requested a camping birthday, complete with fire pit and s’mores. That was one night, twelve years ago, and it was fun, but Jay and I agreed that we did not like sleeping on the ground and preferred our mattress on the boat.

But one recent January night, a few weeks before Sam turned eighteen, he laid out all the camping gear on our salon table which he had acquired for an upcoming backpacking trip with his big brother Eli, an 1100-mile thru-hike of the Florida Trail, from Big Cypress to Pensacola. And, suddenly, we perked up and started to be interested in camping. The trip looked like it had a lot of fun camping spots along the way, and we have discovered that there are many remote wilderness areas we would like to explore that are not coastal in nature, places to which we cannot sail. We’ve done a few road trips, mostly traveling from Airbnb to Airbnb or staying with old friends, trips to visit National Parks in our country’s vast interior, but camping was not really on the radar. Maybe it was because our family was so big, or maybe because we satisfied our need for adventure by cruising on the boat, but until recently, it didn’t seem like a good idea. Of course, we now find ourselves in a phase of life where we are sandwiched between caring for our kids and caring for our parents, where we’ve spent a fair amount of time dropping off and picking up teenagers at various activities and taking parents to doctors’ appointments and visiting hospitals. We don’t feel like we can just take off on our boat for long periods of time. Though we did get to take a six-week sailing trip to the Bahamas last spring, sitting at the dock for long periods of time makes us feel like we’re stagnating.

So, taking inspiration from our boys’ backpacking trip, we went to Sportsman’s Warehouse and Dick’s Sporting Goods one night to look at camping gear. That led to some goal-setting and list-making, and to other trips, first to REI, then to Bass Pro Shop’s Outdoor World in Fort Myers, and finally, to Walmart, to set ourselves up for a camping experiment. I can tell you that it was not cheap, but compared to buying and outfitting a sailboat, it was also not expensive!  And it didn’t seem that hard—with only three of us—Jay, Rachel, and me—it meant the gear would fit into our Suburban with the third row folded down, that we didn’t need a huge tent, and that we didn’t need to carry food to feed an army of teenage boys.

We chose a campground and made a reservation at Bear Island inside Big Cypress National Preserve, on a weekend when the weather would be cool, between 60-75°.  We packed the new cooler with ice and weekend staples, loaded the car with the new gear, and headed out into the swamp. Bear Island is not really an island in the traditional sense. It is a place of high ground in a cypress forest that remains wet most of the year. The campground sits on a relative island of pine trees, palmetto scrub, grassy meadows, palm trees, and hardwood hammocks. The site came with a fire ring and grate, a picnic table, and a pole where one could hang the trash out of reach of bears and raccoons. It also had communal composting toilets, “chimney bathrooms” as Rachel likes to call them. We did not know how good or bad they would be, so we brought a small camp toilet and privy tent just in case.

We set up camp late in the afternoon, re-creating our comfortable home in miniature: a comfortable place sleep, a screened area where we could sit without being eaten by bugs, an outdoor galley with camp stove, utensils, and even a kitchen sink. We did end up using the privy tent and camp toilet, and brought enough water and a solar shower so we had the luxury of privacy and one shower each on Saturday. (Overall, it was a successful experiment. We used almost everything we brought. We cooked on the fire, which was fun, took a lovely long walk on one of the off-road vehicle trails through the forest and swamp, played dominoes, read our books, made s’mores, and even had a breakfast of pancakes made outdoors. We slept fairly well and woke up to birdsong and the cool breeze rustling in the palm fronds. We packed up camp midday Sunday and went back to the boat, where we made a list of things we would do differently and places we’d like to go next. So, I guess we are camping, after all!

(Next up, Camping Experiment Part 2: Gear Review.)