If you are looking for easy camping snacks kids and adults can enjoy, then you are at the right place. Read on to find some easy camping snack ideas your entire family will love.
For some reason spending whole days in the great out of doors tends to make most people hungrier than normal.
So when my kids were growing up we always made sure to have plenty snacks on hand for those times that their in between meal hunger pangs would leave them demanding food now!
While we did tend to have bags of chips and things on hand, we also tried to encourage our children to eat as healthy as possible.
And snack time was a great time to get them to eat some of their fruits and vegetables.
If you are looking for the best snacks to take camping to feed the hungry campers at your site, here are a few easy camping snacks that might hit the spot.
Fresh Fruit Snacks
Fresh fruit is a great camping snack. Not only are things like apples and oranges handy to take along when hiking or out on a boat, fruit is filled with fiber and has enough sugar to keep energy levels up until the next meal.
For some reason, watermelon was and still is part of our camping trips. In times when we camped near colder bodies of water we would keep the watermelon chilled right in lake.
Other times we cut the melon up into bite size pieces at home and put it into gallon storage packs to keep in the cooler.
Fruit Kabobs
If I felt like making an afternoon snack at camp, I would make fruit kabobs.
I just used a long tooth pick and rotated putting pieces of watermelon, musk or honey dew melon, grapes or strawberries and even chunks of pineapple on the tooth picks and the kids had a handy snack they could eat off the stick. (Though, with toddlers I slid the fruit into a cup or onto a small plate.)
Nutty Honeyed Bananas
Another favorite camping snack of my kids that is quick and easy is nutty honey bananas. We would bring along some ground up peanuts and jar of organic honey.
Then when snack time rolled out, we would sprinkle the nuts on small plates and squirt a bit of honey in a small Dixie cup. Then the kids would dip their banana into their honey and then into the nuts.
Vegetable Snacks
My kids were never fans of fresh raw vegetables, but we did get them to eat more raw vegetables when camping.
Getting them to eat carrot sticks was never much of problem if we cut the sticks thin enough. My kids would grab a handful and munch on them like they would fries.
Other vegetables snacks they would eat while camping were eaten less often. But even if they ate one of each type of vegetable snack while we camped I was happy as they did eat cooked vegetables.
Celery Logs
As a parent you probably already know the trick of putting peanut butter inside a piece of celery and placing raisins on top and serving your kids ants on a log.
While I tried this time honored veggie snack with my kids more than once, they just wouldn’t eat it. (Probably because all but 2 of my children didn’t really like peanut butter.)
So instead I would buy a couple packages of dried beef and chopped it up. Then mix it in to some soften cream cheese and use that to fill the celery log. My kids ate these logs up and would often ask for them at meal time as well as snack time.
Veggies and Ranch
If I really was determined to get my kids to snack on raw vegetables all I really needed to do is serve them with ranch dressing.
I simply place some ranch dressing into a small Dixie cup in the middle of the plate and then surround the cup with celery and carrot sticks, Blanched broccoli, and wedges of tomato. The kids would eat every vegetable on their plate until the Ranch dressing ran out.
Other Easy Camping Snacks Kids and Adults Love
Of course not all of our camping snacks centered around vegetables and fruits. Here are few other quick camping snacks that are perfect for campers.
Cottage Cheese Cones
My kids like most kids loved ice cream cones, but there was really no way to keep ice cream frozen at the campsite.
So we would take along some small ice cream cones, fill them up with cottage cheese to resemble an ice cream cone and place a cherry, green or black olive or strawberry on the top and the kids would eat every bite.
Which was pretty amazing when most of them wouldn’t eat cottage cheese any other way. I guess making it more fun also made it more appetizing.
Cheese and Crackers – Easy Camping Snacks
Our whole family likes cheese especially cheddar and Swiss. So one snack that is incredibly easy when camping is simply serving cheese with snack crackers.
Homemade Trail Mix – Quick and Easy Camping Snacks Kids and Adults can Eat on the Go
Hiking can really rev up your appetite. So having a snack that is easy to eat on the trail as well as in camp was a must for our family.
So after checking with a number of different cookbooks (this was before you could find so many recipes online and even before home computers were popular) we came up with the ingredients for making our own trail mix.
The amount of each ingredient would vary depending on how long we planned on camping. But here is what we put into our trail mix.
- Raisins
- Dried cranberries
- Cashews, peanuts, or walnuts (sometimes all three)
- Dehydrated bananas or banana chips
- M & Ms
We mix our trail mix at home in a large bowl and them pour it into snack size baggies. Whenever anyone wanted to snack on trail mix they just grabbed a baggie.
S’Mores – Easy Camping Snacks Kids love (and Adults Too)
No camping trip would be complete without the traditional S’Mores.
S’Mores make great bedtime snacks or even desert after roasting hot dogs over the open fire.
To make a S’More all you need is:
- One graham cracker broken in half
- On one half of the graham cracker place ½ of Hersey’s chocolate bar (without nuts)
- Then roast one or two marshmallows until soft and gooey and place on top of the candy
- Place the other graham cracker half on top and enjoy.
S’more Variations
You can vary your S’More creations any way you like. My kids had two different S’More variations they liked.
In one variation they would place thinly sliced banana on the graham cracker bottom, then the chocolate, topped with marshmallow.
In the second variation they would sprinkle coconut flakes over the chocolate bar before putting on the hot marshmallow.
Remember when camping you want to keep things as simple as possible. So having some easy snacks for your camping trip will make the entire trip relaxing for you and more fun for the kids.
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