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Camping and Hiking with Kids: Metrics & Memories
Updated: Nov 1
Over seven weeks in the American West, our family slept seven nights in a tent and completed 28 hikes totaling 78.1 miles, 10,429 feet of climbing, and 39 hours and 20 minutes on trail … what an adventure!
This post is the practical companion to our destination guides: how we picked campgrounds, how we chose trails our kids would actually finish, what gear we carried, and the mistakes we are happy to let you avoid.
This post is part of our American West series, alongside Washington's National Parks, the Columbia River Gorge, Craters of the Moon, and Yellowstone and Grand Teton.
Our Actual Numbers
We logged every hike in a family spreadsheet, partly for the kids' records and partly because numbers are motivating. Here is the whole trip.
Area | Distance | Elevation gain | Time |
Cuyahoga Valley NP, OH | 2.9 mi | 224 ft | 1 hr 42 min |
North Cascades NP, WA | 7.5 mi | 1,066 ft | 4 hr 11 min |
Olympic NP, WA | 30.4 mi | 2,806 ft | 14 hr 53 min |
Mount Rainier NP, WA | 11.0 mi | 3,215 ft | 6 hr 3 min |
Columbia River Gorge, OR | 3.1 mi | 728 ft | 1 hr 36 min |
Craters of the Moon NM, ID | 7.2 mi | 1,160 ft | 4 hr 3 min |
Big Sky, MT | 2.6 mi | 440 ft | 1 hr 13 min |
Yellowstone NP, WY | 11.2 mi | 1,069 ft | 4 hr 33 min |
Grand Teton NP, WY | 7.9 mi | 889 ft | 3 hr 55 min |
Trip total | 78.1 mi | 10,429 ft | 39 hr 20 min |
And the camping:
Campground | Park | Nights |
North Cascades NP, WA | 3 | |
Whidbey Island, WA | 1 | |
Olympic NP, WA | 1 | |
Olympic NP, WA | 1 | |
Craters of the Moon NM, ID | 1 | |
Total | 7 |
How We Alternated Tents and Roofs
We never camped more than three nights in a row. The pattern was three nights in a tent, then a hotel or lodge, then one or two nights in a tent, then a roof again.
That rhythm solved four problems at once: laundry, showers, charging, and morale. It also let us do school work at a table instead of on a log, which matters when you are worldschooling and the work still has to happen.
If you are planning a first long camping trip with kids, this is the single structural change we would recommend. Camping is wonderful in doses. Camping as a lifestyle is a different skill set, and we are working our way up to it.
Gear: Rent or Buy at Your Starting Point
We flew into Seattle with almost no camping gear and picked everything up at REI on the drive out of the city: tent, sleeping bags, pads, camp chairs, stove, and a cooler.
Six weeks later, in Big Sky, Montana, we boxed the whole kit up and shipped it to family in Ohio. Total cost of buying plus shipping was less than checking that much luggage across multiple flights, and we never once dragged a tent through an airport.
What we would not compromise on again:
A sleeping pad per person with real insulation. Cold comes from below. Our worst night was a cold one.
A headlamp per person. Not shared, not phones. Kids who can find their own way to the bathroom at night sleep better.
Rain layers that live in the day pack permanently. We had sun in the Skagit Valley and sleet at Paradise in the same week.
A real cooler and a camp stove. Cooking at the site saved money and became the kids' favorite chore. Taco night at Newhalem Creek is still cited as a highlight.
How We Pick Hikes Kids Will Finish
After 28 hikes we settled on a few guidelines.
1. One big hike per day, maximum
Our best days had one real hike plus a short walk or a ranger program. Our worst day had two big hikes and a lot of negotiating.
2. Manage length, elevation, and terrain
Our longest hikes were the 8.6 mile Glines Canyon Spillway route in Olympic and the 8.2 mile Lovers Lane loop at Sol Duc. Both worked, and both worked because there was something good in the middle: a dam removal story and a waterfall.
Distance alone tells you very little. A flat 8 miles on a smooth path is easier for a nine year old than 4 miles of loose rock and roots. What actually mattered was the combination: how far, how much climbing was packed into it, and what the ground was like underfoot.
3. Big rewards make the hike worthwhile
The hikes that went best ended at water: Blue Lake in the North Cascades, Marymere Falls at Lake Crescent, Mineral Creek Falls in the Hoh, Inspiration Point above Jenny Lake. Swimming, throwing rocks, or eating lunch on a slab of granite turns a hike into a destination.
4. Front-load the climb
The hardest hike we did was the Skyline Trail at Mount Rainier: 5.8 miles with 1,791 feet of gain, most of it in the first half. Doing the climb first, while everybody is fresh and the view keeps improving, is much easier than saving it for mile four.
5. Snacks and hydration are part of the plan
We packed more food than we thought we needed and still ran out on the long days. Every pack carried a bottle per person, and we treated a snack stop as a scheduled part of the hike rather than a reward for finishing. A hungry or thirsty kid is a kid who is done hiking, no matter what the map says.
Digital Tools We Used
AllTrails for distance, elevation, and recent trail conditions. We downloaded maps offline before every park, because large parts of North Cascades, the Hoh, and Rainier have no signal at all.
Seek by iNaturalist for identifying plants and fungi. Our Sol Duc hike turned into a 90 minute identification session, entirely kid-driven.
The NPS app for ranger program times, closures, and offline park maps.
A shared family log where we record date, trail, distance, elevation, and time. The kids check the running total. It is the cheapest motivation tool we have.
Geocaching when a walk needed a game attached to it.
Safety Rules We Did Not Bend
Bear spray on every hike in Yellowstone and Grand Teton, rented rather than bought, with everybody knowing where it was.
Stay on the boardwalk in every thermal area, no exceptions, explained once with the reason.
Check tide tables before any beach walk on the Olympic coast. Headlands that are passable at low tide are not passable later.
Tell someone the plan when we were heading somewhere with no cell service, which was most days.
Distances from wildlife: 25 yards from bison and elk, 100 yards from bears and wolves. We made estimating the distance a game.
Our Biggest Takeaway
Ask the kids what they remember and the miles barely come up first. They will tell you about the marmot that stared them down on Skyline, taco night at Newhalem Creek, and the 1:00 AM scramble to re-stake a rainfly in the dark. The numbers are fun to record, but the stories are what we remember.
But something did shift out there, and it showed up in small moments. In July, a trail was something we asked them to do. By the end of August, Eva and Jordan were twenty feet ahead of us on the climb, arguing over which switchback was the last one. Nine and eleven turned out to be the right ages for this: old enough to carry their own water and be trusted on a 1,791-foot climb, young enough that standing at the top still counted as a prize.
We can’t wait for the next outdoors adventure!
Author bio: Matt Nobles is a dad, husband, and relentless learner. After nearly 20 years in corporate finance and sustainability, and after having already travelled to 77 countries over the years, he's now spending the 2026–2027 academic year worldschooling with his wife Kelly and their two kids, Eva (11) and Jordan (9). Follow the journey at theglobalnobles.com.
