Urban Camping

Marine Park, Brooklyn

Summer is quickly becoming our favorite season here in New York City.  Overlooking the constant and intrusive smell of urine, and even with the suffocating humidity, New York City is really coming alive right now and our calendar is just filled to capacity with all the free cultural events and outdoor activities on offer.  From outdoor movies and concerts to kayaking on the Hudson, the free activities are vast and plentiful and we're doing our best to experience them all.

Nature hike

One of the highlights of this summer will no doubt be last weekend's urban camping adventure.  New York City Parks and Recreation has this great Urban Park Rangers program which I just stumbled upon because, much like Coney Island, the coolest things occurring in this city are well kept secrets.  The Urban Park Rangers program offers many free, ranger led activities, including canoeing and birding, and this past weekend we got to participate in the family camping component.

The family camping program is designed to expose city kids and families to the experience of camping and occurs in city parks throughout the five boroughs of New York.  Our urban camping experience took place at Salt Marsh Nature Center in Marine Park in Brooklyn.

making s'mores

The program was supposed to begin at 6pm on Saturday night but our subway train was delayed and we didn't get there until 7pm.  Luckily, they waited for us before beginning (the whole night was really friendly and welcoming like that) with a couple of ice breakers for the group of twenty one (though another family of four did join us later in the evening).  After learning everyone's names, we headed out on a ranger led nature hike through the marsh (with ranger-provided binoculars for everyone), including a stop at an osprey nest with three chicks and two very protective parents.  We got back to camp and set-up our ranger-provided tents and had a dinner of ranger-provided MREs (Meals Ready to Eat) before heading out on another, much shorter, night hike to hear the sounds of the night creatures whilst allowing the rangers back at camp the opportunity to set up for s'mores.

Salt Marsh Nature Center (our campsite)

Bedtime was called at around 11pm but the nature center was left open for private use throughout the night.  We were woken up at around 6am the next morning, packed up camp and were home by 8am.  The whole experience only cost us the $2.50 subway ride (each way, per person) and allowed us the opportunity to camp again without having to re-outfit ourselves nor rent a car.  What a great program and what a memorable experience!

Mike & I hope to do at least one more of these family camping nights before the summer is over.  The registration process is via lottery and, though this one was under-subscribed, I get the feeling that's probably not the case for all of them.  If it turns out the program is as popular as it should be then we'll consider ourselves very lucky to have gotten in on our first try.  We had a great time.  Also, those MREs are really quite tasty.