How to Recreate “Pokémon Camp” While Camping

If you and your family are fans of the Nintendo Switch games Pokemon Sword or Pokemon Shield you may be familiar with my kids’ favorite part of the game, Pokemon Camp. This is a new feature where you set up a camp with your party Pokemon pretty much anywhere in-game. You can play with each one of your pals with various toys or even make fun versions of curry with them. For more info, you can visit Nintendo’s Pokemon Camp page which gives all the details on this feature.

When we started planning our latest camping trip, I asked each of my boys what meal they would like me to include in the menu. B jumped up and asked if we could have curry. I was a bit surprised as whenever Hubby and I make Chicken Tikka Masala he will eat it but is never a big fan. Then he explained he wanted to make it just like they do in the game. At this point our living room exploded into excited ramblings of ideas and plans for how we could make the whole trip Pokémon themed. This worked out well as Gastly Community Day fell on the same weekend in Pokémon Go. We often play quite a bit of Pokémon Go on our camping trips so this was a perfect way to add something special to this camping trip.

A Menu for Pokémon

I knew the feature meal for the weekend, Chicken Tikka Masala. I am by no means an expert in curries, but I did a quick Google search and made sure the one I knew how to make qualified. But how do you make it outside without a kitchen? We are tent campers so I have either a cooking stove or a fire pit to work with. I decided we would use our rather large and amazing cast iron Dutch oven and try to make it as a one pot meal over the fire. (I cheated a bit and used our collapsible fire grate to grill the naan, but it was for a good cause.) B was so excited about making curry he asked to help with every step, it was a great time and some of my favorite memories from this trip.

If you don’t have a favorite curry recipe, feel free to use ours which is great for your first time, you can find it in this blog post. (Link to come.)

The Guests of Honor

Next, we piled all of our Pokémon stuffed animals into the car. Hubby was a bit surprised I agreed to this as we have, well, A LOT of them, but in the end it worked out okay. The kiddos played with them in the tent and made up several games they played together throughout the trip. I told them they were responsible for making sure they were well taken care of and that they didn’t get dirty or in the way.

Let’s Play

I also picked up a couple of surprises in the form of packs of Pokémon cards for the kiddos to open while we were at camp. If you are on a budget you can find these at dollar stores, our local store carries small packs up by the registers, but you can also find slightly larger packs at stores like Target and Walmart for as little as $7.00 again usually by the registers. I then happened upon some pintables from the Pokémon Go Fest that was coming up and printed them out as a fun activity for the kids to do around the campsite.

Success Trainer!

We had so much fun at our Pokémon Camp. It was a great way to enhance our camping trip and spend some time as a family playing together. The kiddos have even come up with more ideas for our next Pokémon Camp and I hope we can do it again soon. This activity was great on a camping trip but can also be done on a smaller scale in your backyard or living room.

Do you think you will give creating your own Pokémon Camp a try? Let me know in the comments below how it goes!