A Campsgiving in Kentucky
We brave the elements for quiet quality time as a family
The following post is too long for email. You will need to open the full blog post in your browser to read the whole post.
My husband Jeff and I were discussing Thanksgiving plans as we tried to guess what my sister and her family would want to do for their first Thanksgiving in their new house.
Our 13-year-old stopped the whole conversation when he asked, “Wait, we’re not camping?”
I gave him a skeptical look. “We’ve been so busy and the weather is unpredictable and are you sure you still want to do it?”
Our move back to Indiana from Texas had disrupted five years of Thanksgiving tradition: camping away from the pressures of hosting. Campsgiving became a hallowed family tradition, one which no one wanted to end after we moved back to Indiana with its unpredictable November weather. (You can read more about those travels in my new book, The Life I Never Knew I Wanted.)
Last year we caved to the kids’ desires and made reservations in Michigan. It was cold, but we figured out how to stay warm and came home with good memories.
Our teenagers were ready to try it again.
So I gave in and looked for Kentucky state parks that would still be open at the end of November. I figured if we were going to do this, I should try to head at least a few hours south. I finally settled on Carter Caves State Park in eastern Kentucky, about four hours away from home. It was going to be a bit of a haul, but pretty similar to what we had done for the years we lived in Texas.
My husband Jeff and I both took Tuesday off from work so we could prepare for our trip and leave at a decent time. Even with all of the planning and extra time, we didn't arrive until dusk, pulling into a large campground with only one other RV settled in for the night.
Then we discovered my first mistake.
The water to the campground had already been shut off for the winter.
I had debated leaving the house without filling up. I had weighed our options and considered the extra weight of traveling with a full tank. But I knew the campsites had water available and we were going to be parked right behind one of the bathrooms. I figured we would be fine.
But no water came out of the spigot at our site. The bathroom directly behind our campsite was locked.
And as often happens when things don’t go well right away, I panicked. I should have called to verify before we left, but I didn’t. It was dark, the temperatures were dropping, and I didn’t even know where the closest open bathroom was.
I called the state park lodge in a panic. The receptionist let me know there were still bathrooms with water at the entrance to the campground and that the water was still on at the horse campground. If we wanted to go over there, we could fill up and return to our site.
But we were already parked and Jeff didn’t want to maneuver around the trees on our site in the dark, again. The temperature was also dropping into the mid to low 30s. I ran over to the bathroom while talking on the phone with the poor girl trying to help me figure out what to do. I discovered warm bathrooms and a spigot on the back of the building that still produced water. I thanked her and ran back to our campsite, praying I didn’t trip over any roots along the way.
It wasn’t even six o’clock yet, so Jeff found our jug and we filled the water in the camper the old-fashioned way, five to six gallons at a time. Once we had a solution, I relaxed a little, but I didn’t stop being mad at myself for failing to plan ahead.
Our son made our first campfire of the trip and we enjoyed a quick dinner of burgers and then s’mores around the fire. Jeff and I were ready to call it a night after I killed the fire by moving logs around, but our daughter brought it back to life and our two kids sat by the fire and just talked. Even as a family of four, our kids are so busy they don’t spend much time together anymore. And as they’ve gotten older, their interests have completely diverged. But watching them sit by a campfire, talking and laughing together, reminded me why we keep prioritizing camping together as much as possible.
The next day we devoted ourselves to pure family time. I got up and made a late breakfast before we headed to the visitor center and got tickets for an afternoon cave tour. We all scrounged around the camper for something to eat for lunch and then headed to the entrance to Cascade Cave for a ranger-led tour. We had accidentally found the parking lot the afternoon before when our GPS took us to that obscure spot instead of the park’s main entrance, Jeff proving his driving skills by turning the camper around in the empty, but small, parking lot. This time we met up with a large group of other park visitors eager to see one of Kentucky’s many caves.
We saw stunning cave formations, a creek running through the whole cave, and a natural waterfall. We even saw a few bats who had chosen to not hibernate with their thousands of siblings in one of the three caves closed during the winter months for that very purpose. (We also learned these are called hibernaculums, which is now a fun factoid Jeff and I feel the need to throw around whenever the occasion arises.)
Jeff’s parents drove down from Michigan to join us for Thanksgiving, but they were staying in the lodge instead of at the campground. We met up with them at our campsite after the tour, the French dip that had been cooking in the slow cooker finally ready for an evening meal around another campfire. Jeff and I went through the process of filling the tank with enough water to get us through the following day and then settled in for the night around a roaring fire.
The next morning we got up for a Thanksgiving tour of the X-Cave, which was easy enough for my in-laws to maneuver, despite the narrow passages. It’s called an X-cave because separate dry and wet caves have merged into one cave due to the erosion of a single passage. Even though it was shorter, our son thought it was the cooler of the two caves we visited, and I have to agree the formations were pretty amazing. We even got to see two snuggling bats who have also decided to hibernate away from their brethren.
Then it was time to get ready for our Thanksgiving feast.
I’ve had people ask me how we can possibly do Thanksgiving in a campground. The answer is, we just do it. We still make all of the traditional foods with the help of an oil-less fryer and our outdoor cooking appliances. The biggest problem we faced was a sudden drop in temperatures after it had rained the whole night before. But we still made Thanksgiving happen. Jeff and our son prepped the turkey, which we had brined on our way to Kentucky. I made potatoes, stuffing, and gravy. My mother-in-law made green bean casserole. We built a fire and played a few rounds of cornhole before people went back into the camper for a few moments to warm back up. And when the turkey was finally ready, we enjoyed our feast.
We caved to the cold and ate our pie dessert near the fire in the lodge. Our daughter took a shower in her grandparents’ room so she could avoid the cold of the campground. And then we finally settled in for the night with the furnace keeping us just warm enough through the night.
When I woke up early the next morning, snow swirled around me and the dogs as I walked them around the campground in the dim morning light. We got out of the campground a little after eight, making it home to Indianapolis in time for our daughter to head to Chicago for the weekend with friends and my husband and son to make it downtown in time to see our high school play in the state championship.
We faced the risk of the deep freeze of the next week damaging the lines in the camper, especially since we didn’t have time to blow out the lines before the temperatures dropped, but we were thankful we took the time as a family to go camping one more time before spring.
And who knows if we’ll do this all again next year. We’ll have to see how 2025 goes.
Get a copy of my planning spreadsheet below:
Support my writing
While most of my work here is free for all subscribers, it is still a labor of love that I fit into the few hours I have when I am not teaching or being an attentive wife and mom. If you want to support my writing but you do not want to commit to being a paid subscriber, please consider a one-time donation.
You can also support me by ordering my book or books from my favorite book lists at my Bookshop.org affiliate page.
Check out my RedBubble store for related merchandise.
If you want to be a regular supporter, you can upgrade your subscription from free to paid and get occasional content only for paid subscribers.
And thank you for supporting my journey 💗
I didn't know you were in Indianapolis. I'm down the road in Madison, Indiana. There's a nice campground here on the river in Madison, though it does close in October. And Clifty Falls, of course.