This week I'm excited to introduce our friend Shannon. She and her wife are masters of organizing group camping trips, which we have been lucky to be part of for many years now. (They created the camping spreadsheet I shared last week). They have also started taking their kids backpacking and skiing, while impressively managing sports and activity schedules. She is right about how friends help kids hike more - when my kids hike with them they go much farther!

Transitioning to parenthood:

1. What outdoor activities did you do before you had kids? More Skiing and backpacking, kayaking, plus all that we do with kids
2. If you or your spouse were pregnant, did that person continue any of the activities and how did they modify the activity while pregnant? Not really, we got a cushier sleeping pad for car camping. 
3. If you do different activities after having kids, why is that? We haven’t taken the kids paddling yet, but we should be able to do that with our 9 year old soon. Our schedules are busier now with sports and kid activities, so we don’t necessarily prioritize our outdoor activities. We waited until age 7 or so to introduce downhill skiing, but did enjoy cross country skiing when they were young.
4. How old were your kids when you started doing outdoor activities with them? We started camping and hiking when the kids were just a few months old.
5. What was your biggest challenge when you started doing outdoor activities with the kids? Working around the nap schedule! Trying to schedule a hike around a toddler’s nap is tough. 

Outdoor parenting:

1. How have these challenges changed as the kids got older? Our schedules have gotten busier! Soccer, swimming, softball teams, birthday parties, etc. The kids are less enthusiastic about hiking now, but that usually dissipates after the first quarter mile. 
2. Do you have trouble maintaining the kids interest in the activity (ie during a long hike) and if you do, how do you keep the kids interested? Candy. Lots of candy. Also, we just introduced the kids to geocaching and the kids are surprisingly interested! The best thing is having friends on a hike! Chatting with friends makes the miles fly by! Finding ways to make things fun by singing and playing games while hiking helps. 
3. How do you fit the activities into your working life? We try to get out for a hike every week. During our 2020 Shelter in Place we tried to get out one midweek afternoon each week for a hike. 
4. How do you balance outdoor activities with kids activities (organized sports, music, school)? It’s hard! Our balance leans toward a greater commitment to team sports at the detriment of our outdoor adventures. That said, we don’t have a problem with taking off on a Friday after lunch a few times a year to get an early start to a camping weekend. 
5. If you have a partner, how do you ensure that both of you can keep doing your outdoor activities? We take turns. She likes running so I make sure to be on kid duty so she can run. I play soccer, so she’s on duty then. When we’re outdoors together, we’re both on duty...with some breaks.

Summary/Conclusion:

1. What resources helped you figure out how to do these outdoor activities with your kids? (books, friends, groups, blogs, etc). We started with Strollerhikes.com when our oldest was a baby. Then we found a core group of friends who shared our interest in getting outdoors with the kids. Mostly we relied on our outdoor skills from before kids. 
2. What is your favorite outdoor parenting hack? Put the baby/toddler in a snowsuit for chilly nights when camping. Bring extra blankets to pile on in the middle of the night.
3. What is your biggest outdoor parenting mistake? Not pushing the kids hard enough. They can do so much more than we think they can. 
4. If you could give one piece of advice to other outdoor families, what would it be? It is ok to start small, within your comfort zone. Just get out!
5. What is your favorite piece of gear for outdoor parenting? A small solar powered inflatable lantern. It is lightweight enough for backpacking, but creates a lovely soothing glow in the tent.

For our second interview we are excited to share Karl's experience as an outdoor dad. We have known him and his family for a few years. They are part of a group of families we go on group camping trips with a few times a year, until they moved back to Colorado. I have always been impressed with how they find the time to get into the mountains so often while they both worked full time jobs and also with the impressive hiking stamina of their daughter.

Transitioning to parenthood:

1. What outdoor activities did you do before you had a kid? Pretty much the same with less day hiking and more climbing, mountain biking and trail running.
2. When your spouse was pregnant, she continue any of the activities and how did she modify the activity while pregnant? We tried to keep up the outdoor activities.  We even planned a backpacking trip at about 5 months, but afterward we discovered that she needed to back off a bit.  She also gave up canoeing and climbing and any other activity that had a potential for jostling.
3. If you do different activities after having a kid, why is that? Our activities changed and how we approached those activities changed, partly to accommodate the safety and abilities of our child, but also because we were getting older and slowing down a bit.
4. How old was your kid when you started doing outdoor activities with them? 4 months.
5. What was your biggest challenge when you started doing outdoor activities with your kid? Finding that balance between fun and exhaustion.

Outdoor parenting:

1. How have these challenges changed as your kid got older? I’m not sure it has. We still work hard at pushing our child’s limits without harming them or making the activity miserable. Every year she can do more, so we do more.
2. Do you have trouble maintaining the kid's interest in the activity (ie during a long hike) and if you do, how do you keep the kid interested? Hiking games! From Fetch the stick to 20 Questions to Name an Ingredient.  The games have changed as she has aged, but they are still very useful as the mileage increases. 
3. How do you fit the activities into your working life? Anyway we can (from maxing out our weekends to taking a six month sabbatical).
4. How do you balance outdoor activities with kid's activities (organized sports, music, school)? We have avoided organized sports and have done everything we can to keep our weekends open. 
5. How do you and your partner ensure that both of you can keep doing your outdoor activities? We have settled on a group of activities that we can all enjoy together. 
6. Have you ever received pushback on outdoor parenting from family, friends, or community? No.

Summary/Conclusion:

1. What resources helped you figure out how to do these outdoor activities with your kid? (books, friends, groups, blogs, etc) We have pretty much learned by trial and error.  We just kept doing what we liked to do and tweaked things along the way. Early on, I was also involved in a Bay Area group called Stroller Hikes, that organized mid-week hikes with the littles. They are still up and running and can be found at strollerhikes.com.
2. If you’re a writer, what are the blog posts, articles, books, videos that you have written/created that you think would most help other families?  Back when our daughter was little and I had more time, I published a blog with tons of stories and photos from our earlier adventures. It’s quite a good snapshot of our transition from an adventurous couple to adventurous parents. I currently have aspirations of adding some of our more recent long treks and the planning involved in making them happen. The blog can be found at somehowlost.com
3. What is your favorite outdoor parenting hack? Just get outside. Go early and often.
4. What is your biggest outdoor parenting mistake? This one is hard.  I don’t want to say we didn’t make any mistakes, but honestly none of them mattered. We now have a daughter that is just as addicted to the outdoors as we are.

After a 5 month break, we are back with more page updates and some exciting plans to expand the content of OKH in 2020.

OKH changes:

• If you go to the pages for Activity Types you'll see they no longer links to the blog pages. They are now stand-alone information pages that also have a change log for each section, so you can see how recently it was updated and also track our progress improving the pages.
• Each week as we add new site content we'll release it in the blog at the same time, so you can subscribe to it in your blog reader if you'd like. It is also a great place for you to give us your feedback on the information. We'll monitor the comments and add your suggestions onto the main page later. All changes will be tracked that in the change tracker at the bottom of each page.
  
• Much more in the works to be announced later!

For this week, check out our new page update on "Where to park your ski van". This was originally written in December, but a family emergency derailed posting plans for a while. 

The best part of sleeping in a van or RV while skiing is the flexibility in where you can stay each night, depending on the weather or where the good snow is. Here are some tips on where to stay:

Legal parking:

• SNO-Park
  • Oregon SNO-PARK permits, Idaho Park-n-ski permits, and California SNO-PARK permits all have reciprocity
  • You can't overnight park at all of the California SNO-Parks, look for posted signs that prohibit it
•  ​Resorts that specifically allow it
  • There are some on-line lists of resorts that allow parking, but the best bet is to do a google search before you head to the resort for the most up to date info, since it sometimes changes
• Walmart - depending on the location
• BLM Land 
• Look for a campground that is open in the area, although most are closed for the winter
• RV campground - usually more expensive
• Hostels - some allow RV hookup and use of a kitchen for cooking

Stealth camping:

• Look for places that don’t specifically outlaw it - look at town ordinances
  • For example, many Colorado ski towns specifically outlaw it
• Make your van look as stealthy as possible, park your van late and move it early
• Look for resorts that don’t specifically have a rule against parking 
• Don't use uncovered Reflectrix in windows - cover it with dark tape or something, since it it makes it look more obvious that you're sleeping in there 

Other tips:

• Find places to get showers every few days if you don’t have showers, or place to get laundry done.
  • Camp at a RV campground or hostel, or splurge and get a hotel room for a night
• Park near a place that has bathroom access - especially useful with kids
  • Many SNO-Parks in California have pit toilets
  • Park near a hotel or lodge with bathrooms in common areas

It feels weird at first if you have not done it before, especially with kids. I had visions of getting in trouble with the police, which I didn’t want to do with kids. But it gets easier to do over time, and after a hard day of skiing all anyone wants to do is sleep anyway. 

We fit the bigger skis on the roof and the little kid skis in the trailer hitch box. Other items we put in the box are food, helmets, poles, backcountry gear (skins, probe, beacon), and ski backpacks. 

For storage inside the car, the big thing we did to make it easier was remove the console between the front two seats. We covered the hole that was left with a custom piece of carpet that we bought online in a color to match the car. We added two D-anchors in case we wanted to anchor anything between the seats and these are bolted down to the anchors that held the console in place.

Inside the car we keep clothes bags, any personal items (books, flashlights, etc), and ski boots, to keep them a bit warmer at night. During driving mode, these items are right behind the driver and passenger seats and anchored down with an elastic cargo net that clips onto the attachment points for the cargo seats (that is left behind after we took the cargo seats out of the car).

When we switch to sleeping mode, this stuff can be put between the two front seats, on the seats, or in front of the seats. Usually we put the car seats on the front seats first, then put the items in the spaces around them, before setting up the cot.

With this plan, the amount of time spent moving stuff around for set up and take down of the beds is minimized, and we've been able to fit in everything we need for a full week-long trip in the van.

​Our biggest concern about sleeping in a van during ski season was staying warm, specifically keeping the kids warm. 

We considered propane heaters, both portable ones (like a Mr Buddy heater) and permanently installing one in the wall of the van. We also found one that runs on the car’s gasoline. However we were very concerned about carbon monoxide poisoning, especially if the car gets covered in snow. 

We looked at electric blankets hooked up to a big battery, but it seemed that it might not last all night and we’d be constantly recharging the battery. And we couldn’t recharge it in one day from a small solar panel on the roof. 

In the end we just decided to see how warm we could stay without extra heat during the night. We figured we could ease into the ski season by starting when it was still warmer weather and if we found the weather getting too cold we could drive 45 min down the mountain to where it’s warmer and sleep there overnight. 

Our plan was to have everyone sleep in sleeping bags. We heated up the car as much as possible before bed (after inspecting the exhaust pipe to confirm it wasn’t blocked). We bought a carbon monoxide detector just in case and attached it to the inside of the van. In the morning if it was too cold we could make sure there was no new snow and then turn the car on to warm it up before getting the kids out of bed. 

The sleeping bags we used were all 10 to 17F (-12 to -8C) bags in good condition, except one 20F (-7C) bag in poor condition which was for an adult who claims not to get cold easily. We also insulated all the windows. We bought a Weather Tech windshield cover.  We made custom covers for all the other windows using Reflectix that was cut to fit the window. Then we covered one side of each piece with black Gorilla tape. This makes one side good for hot weather (reflecting the sun) and one good for cold weather (absorbing the heat) and also makes the pieces stiffer so they fit in the window easier and last longer. Also when the black side is facing out it makes it less obvious that someone is sleeping there. We usually parked the van between other cars in a sheltered location, to minimize the impact of windchill. 

The result was that we were usually about 15F (9C) warmer inside the van in the morning than it was outside, so we ended up staying pretty warm. We believe that this is in large part due to good insulation in the van walls, along with the window insulation, and also because of the small space with 4 people in it. We have been comfortable down to 10F (-12C) in the van. The coldest night we have spent in the Van was -19F (-28C) outside -5F (-20C) inside, and we decided that was way too cold. 

Interestingly, we did spend one night without the kids and found the temperature difference from outside to inside was only a few degrees F (1C) so the kids are important to keeping the van warm. 

I started playing with temperature loggers to document the temperatures we are seeing. Here’s a graph of outside vs inside the van overnight:

The key to sleeping 4 people in a Toyota Sienna is to take advantage of the space over the front seats. We fold down the front seats, put the car seats on the front seats, and set up a custom made cot on top of the front seats. Here is what it looks like from the side view:

More details to come on how to stay warm in winter while sleeping in a van!

We were looking for a vehicle we could sleep in with our whole family on weekend ski trips in order to cut down on lodging costs. In the winter we usually ski at least two weekends a month and the hotels have a minimum of two nights stays on the weekends. We considered renting a place for the winter or buying a place, but both options cost more and involve more maintenance time.

When we started researching ski vans for families we didn’t find a lot of information easily available so it took a while to figure out what would work for us. In order to make sleeping in the Toyota Sienna work we had to come up with a DIY solution, which I’ll explain separately. Here is a summary of what we were looking for, what options we found, and then why we picked the one we did.

What we were looking for in a family-friendly ski van:

• Fits 4 people: while sleeping and while driving
• Vehicle safety rating: we wanted something that was rated for safety in an accident
• AWD: California requires chains when there is snow on the road, so if you don't have AWD you end up spending a lot of time putting chains on
• Seats with Latch System attachments: when we got the van we had a small 4 year old
• Multi-purpose or fold away seats: so when we're in sleeping mode we can put away the seats and have more room for sleeping
• Stealth: a nice to have feature- no one suspects people sleep in a minivan!
• Gas mileage: since we would be driving it 350 miles round trip every time we go to ski
• Versatility for everyday use: we needed it as our backup/second car for occasional commuting
• Expansion potential: possibility of adding extra storage with a trailer hitch or roof top box
• Cost: couldn’t break the bank with something super fancy/custom​

What we weren’t looking for:

• Kitchen: our plan was to eat cold breakfast or lunch, unless we could get hot water from a ski resort, and go out to dinner (or cook on a camping stove if we wanted to)
• Bathroom: we park near places with bathrooms (like Sno-Parks or ski resorts) or use a restaurant bathroom before parking and have a small setup in case of urgent need

Here are the vehicle types we looked at to decide on the Toyota Sienna:

​So for us the one that fit all of the criteria we were looking for was the Toyota Sienna. We just had to design a sleeping system so we could fit in it, which I explain here.