Outdoor Activities for a Fun Camping Trip

A camping trip can be a great fun experience whether you go out with friends or family.

In order to keep your adventure exciting, we have prepared a list of camping activities and games you can play that are sure to make your trip memorable.

The Alphabet Game

This is a great camping game to play if you have young kids with you. The goal is to find objects starting with each letter of the Alphabet, from A to Z. You can write them down or just point at them. The first one to finish the whole alphabet wins.

Storytelling

This is one of our favorite. Gather around the campfire at night, roasting marsh-mellows over the fire and everyone takes turns telling a story. The game is equally popular among kids, teens and adults. The story can be funny, scary, fictional or true. You can take a vote at the end to see who has told the best story and the winner gets a reward. This always adds to the fun as everyone tries to outdo each other and you can hear some of the funniest or scariest tales ever told.

Scavenger Hunt

This is another popular activity on a camping trip and can be played as a family game or with a group of friends. We suggest modifying the game based on the group age. In case you have younger kids with you, you can pair them up with an adult and create teams of two or three.

Each group or player gets a list of things that they are supposed to find and bring back to the camp. Since you are in nature it would be a good idea to focus on gathering things like leaves, flowers or bugs. If you are camping at a site with a popular natural resource, such as limestone deposits, you can add a sample of that to your list as well. You can also add pictures of the more popular attractions in the park to the hunt.

The first team to return to camp with all the items wins.

Camping Olympics

This is another fun camping activity for families that offers a lot of fun. You can create ‘a Mini Olympics’ with activities such as swimming, racing along trails, long jumps, climbing and throwing rocks into a lake. You can add scoring for each activity. Make it more exciting by putting up a prize for each event and the final score.

The game can also be modified for an adult age group by adding difficulty.

Play Charades

This is another popular camping game for families and adults alike. Charades is played by dividing the group into a number of teams. One player from each team is given a secret word or sentence. This can be the name of a movie, a song, a person, event or anything you choose. The player then silently acts the secret word out for the team members who take guesses.

The Mafia Game

You can also play the popular mafia game on a camping trip. This game is more suited to adults than kids though.

There are two roles in the game. You can either be a member of the mafia or an innocent. Roles are assigned at the start of a game by drawing cards (or scraps of papers with roles written) from a box or bowl.

One person plays the moderator. There are two phases in the game; day and night. The moderator declares the day and night phase on each turn. During the night phase, all the players close their eyes and look away. The mafia members however can keep their eyes open and gesture to the moderator towards one person that they choose ‘to kill’. They also close their eyes and turn away after the moderator acknowledges their decision.

The moderator declares day and everyone opens their eyes. The moderator declares the designated person has been ‘killed’ by the mafia and that person is out of the game. The remaining players, including the mafia members, then debate to identify which players are the members of mafia. They vote by simple majority on one player to be ‘hanged’ as mafia and that player is removed as well.

The game goes on until all the mafia members or innocents are removed from the game. The members of the surviving team are declared winners. Usually the number of mafia members is lower than innocents. As a general rule, one mafia member per five players is considered a good ratio.

The game is quite popular as a fun party game and can be a great activity on a camping trip as well.