First Camping Trip With Kids (What Could Go Wrong?)

·14 min·1 clip

Ryan Holiday takes his kids on their first camping trip, with their wives expecting it to end in disaster.

Ryan Holiday opens with a sponsor ad for CarGurus before introducing the weekend edition of the Daily Dad podcast. He explains that he sometimes interviews guests but lately has been talking with his wife, Samantha, about parenting. In this episode, he shares a personal story about a camping trip during his kids' four-day Easter weekend. He drove to pick up his sons from school and packed for the trip to Garner State Park, about three hours west of Austin. The group included dads from their school and a friend from New Orleans. Ryan mentions they had a tent but misplaced it, so they bought a new one and opted for thin sleeping pads to build character, which he later regretted. They forgot pillows and had to make a last-minute store run. The weather was lucky, with rain holding off until they were mostly packed. On the first night, his son wanted to switch sleeping mats, leaving Ryan on a thinner one. His son woke him early to see the sunrise, which was unusual behavior. The tent had issues, blowing off and collapsing, so Ryan decided to donate it and buy a better one. He reflects on how his family might have struggled financially and stubbornly kept a bad tent in the past. After a sponsor ad for Ethos life insurance, Ryan talks about the kids enjoying simple activities like throwing sticks in the fire and playing in the river. He mentions the book 'Last Child in the Woods' and how the kids didn't whine during the trip. He applied a parenting rule about not interrupting kids having fun. One dad used AI to create a spreadsheet for meal and task planning, which Ryan found useful. His son said 'best camping trip ever,' and Ryan emphasizes that success means wanting to do it again. On the way back, they visited Lyndon Johnson National Park, but the house was under construction, so they did a driving tour and saw Air Force One Half. Ryan signed his kids up for summer camp after the trip and plans future camping trips, possibly to Balmore.

As heard by us

A family camping trip turns a faulty tent and an early sunrise into a warm case for trying again.

Camping with children becomes a small test of patience, gear, and expectation in this candid Daily Dad episode. The story turns on a child who keeps waking his father because he wants to see the sunrise, a funny reversal from ordinary mornings when even getting dressed can take…

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Why you'd press play

Want a family camping trip where one kid is suddenly desperate for sunrise, and the tent earns a harsher review than the weather?

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