i've gone camping numerous times and i'd suggest you bring lots of bug spray!!!!
here's a story, i found it sort of humoring. i had gone camping a while back with my friends and their mom. the area where we were at, obviously had lots of animals around and all kinds of bugs.
you had your own area, you could bring your RV and park it for the weekend or pitch a tent, or what not. and they had bathrooms in the center of the camping area for everyone to use. it was kind of a lengthy walk because the camp ground was sooo HUGE! they were single bathrooms, outdoor ones, but not like those porta-potties. decent bathrooms and all. so, we would always go in a group to the bathrooms and wait for the others to come out. well, one of our friends came out of the bathroom and we were all waiting for her outside the door. and then all of a sudden when she comes out, we see a skunk right there behind us, and we were like sh*T!!!! what do we do now!!!!!
there was no way we were gonna run back to our tents because it was pretty far,a nd we were like, what if this skunk chases after us, it's gonna catch up to us and we're gonna get sprayed.
so we ALL ran and shoved ourselves into the single bathroom all together! and there was like 5 of us. all into a single bathroom and locked the door so the skunk wouldn't get in. we were all squished in there and waited a while until the skunk left.
if you do sleep in a tent, make sure the when yoiur setting up your tent, that the bolt things are dug way into the ground, really really well. they're going to hold your tent in place. at night when we had gone camping, the tent blew over in the middle of the night because the wind was really strong. and we were sleeping in it!!!
dont' place food in your tent, like chips, cookies, stuff like that, any kind of food. because while your gone swimming or whatever, racoons and squirrels and stuff WILL find a way to get into your tent and they like have this sense of knowing when foods in your tent. at the camp site, they'll usually have this storage box in the center of your camp area where you can store food in there and it'll keep your food safe from like bears or whatever.
if it's a tent your sleeping in, before you go to bed, make sure to get rid of all the mosquitos and other bugs that might have gotten into your tent thorughout the day. you'll have a horrible night sleeping if they're in there with you.
bring a sweatshirt for at night, even if you dont' think it'll be cold at night, it will be. it'll come in handy if your around a fire with famiy and all.
marshmallows are also good to bring for s'mores! i enjoy that. we had used metal clothes hangers, we had just unraveled them from their shape and used those for the marshmallows.
flashlights come in vERY handy for when your looking for something at night in your tent. or even ifyour not sleeping in a tent, flashlights are always great!!!
i don't really recommend bringing flip flops because where your standing, there's bound to be bugs crawling on the ground, some that camoflouge with the ground and they'll pick at your feet and leave ugly sores and stuff.i mean,you are out in the wilderness. but i guess you'll want to bring them if you go swimming.
that's as much as i can think of right now. i hope you enjoy yourself!