This Father's Day adventure travel with your dad

   All photos courtesy of Przemek Panek

Adventure travel with your father this Father’s Day and pay back the time he spent with you as a child. It is always difficult to find the perfect Father’s Day gift for your dad, but the best gift that you can give your dad is your time. Take him out to dinner, spend the day grilling out with him, or best yet, go adventure traveling with him.

Your dad is the one that taught you how to play baseball, taught you to ride a bike, took you to baseball games, took you fishing, and supported you all along the way. Despite having to devote much more of his time and energy to work to provide for you than he would have wanted, he still had the time to muster enough energy after coming home to throw the ball around with you and take you to a ball game on the weekends.

As both children and fathers get older the roles reverse as exemplified in the song Cat’s in the Cradle by Harry Chapin, which was actually a poem written by his wife Sandy. The song is in four stanzas and in the first two stanzas the boy is idolizing his father and wanting to follow him around, but his father is too busy and tired from work to give him the time his son wants and deserves. In the next stanza the son eschews his father attempts to spend time by wanting to borrow the car and hang out with friends after coming home from college. Then in the last stanza the son has his own family and cannot spend time with his dad as “the new job is a hassle and the kids have the flu.” It is obvious the son is punishing his father for his lack of attention with him as a child.

I was fortunate to have a father that wanted to spend time with me growing up and the best way that we related to each other is when we went camping together. Some of the places my dad took me included the Boundary Waters Canoe Area and Quetico, the Porcupine Mountains, the Great Smokey Mountains, the Everglades, Isle Royal National Park, and Big Bend National Park to name a few. No Walt Disney in my past, but I preferred the alligators and the swamps of Florida to Mickey Mouse and Epcott. I would not be writing adventure travel articles if it was not for the time my dad spent with me as a child and I love him for that.

It is difficult now to find the time to do things like this now with multiple jobs and commitments, but I will always find a weekend or two or three a year in order to go camping with my dad. We spent Memorial Day weekend together camping on the sand bars of the Wisconsin river and it was a great time talking about past trips and experiences that we have shared together. We have talked about some stories from past trips a hundred times, but it does not hurt to rehash it for number one-hundred-and-one around the campfire.

This is why I recommend a camping trip with your dad this Father’s Day or sometime this summer when time permits. Take him fishing, have a campfire at a great camping spot, or go for a walk in the woods with your father. Do not be the character in the Harry Chapin song and rebuff his company. It is now your job to repay the time he spent with you as a child.

Subscribe to my articles with the button at the top of this page.  Examiner does not share or sell your email address and there is no spam.  Other e-follow options are listed below.  Just click on the icons and they will take you there.

Ted Nelson was recently named one of the top 101 Adventure Travel twitterers on twitter.  http://abroadening.com/161  Click on the icon below to follow me there.