In the last weekend of January before Joshua started school, we borrowed a friends ute and all his camping gear and took the family on our first ever camping trip.

Considering we hadn’t spent a single night in a tent together, Kim and I were a bit apprehensive about the whole thing, but thought since a lot of our friends with kids were camping, it seemed like the ‘in thing’ to do. Not wanting to let the Jones get one up on us we packed our friends gear and headed on our way!

We did our research on camping grounds/holiday parks and were initially shocked at the cost per night for our family. Around $70 per night (2 adults & 2 children) for a piece of unpowered land! But looking around various holiday parks in the Bay of Plenty, we quickly came to the realisation that this was a rational charge during the high season, which we unfortunately were going to be falling into.

We decided on the Ohope Beach TOP 10 Holiday Park which came highly recommended to us by friends who had spent time there recently.

The facilities were a major draw card for us; an outdoor pool with two slides and a kiddies pool, a childrens playground and even mini golf! While the mini golf course was a little tired and needing a freshen up, it was a great holiday park and we will certainly be returning there one day once we have our own camping gear.

I took plenty of photos and videos on my iPhone and put together this short holiday video using the iMovie app on my iPad so we can relive our first family camping trip for many years to come.