Camping Tips and Tricks
Like many outdoor enthusiasts a majority of our summer is spent in a tent. Over the last couple of years, we have come up with some tricks. From keeping water out of our tent, to keeping our food stuffs organized and secure. We figured we could lend a little insight for the next time you pack for a camping trip.
-Store your food and cooking utensils in plastic tubs. This not only keeps things from getting smashed and dirt free. It also makes it easy to transport. We keep our food in the trunk of our car, while we can leave the cooking utensils out near the firepit without concern of dirt and critters.
-Use a shower curtain from the dollar store as a tent liner. We learned this when we were in a pinch. We had forgotten to pack our tent liner and rain was in the forecast, a shower curtain was our solution. We learned that it worked just as well as our tent liner without the cost. It can be placed on the inside or outside, we usually put it on the outside, this way our tent bottom stays clean. If the curtain gets too muddied up, we toss it.
-Pack a laundry bag, or a few. We will pack a couple of extra laundry bags in our camping gear. We use them as extra bags to and from the shower house or lake. They are also good to have around after tick infested hikes. If we go on a hike that is particularly ticky we will use the extra laundry bags to separate our contaminated clothes from our clean clothes.
-Pack a jug of water for washing utensils. We keep a jug of water on our picnic table for easy washing. From our hands to utensils we can keep tidy.
-Fire cooking doesn’t need to be just hotdogs and hamburgers. Here are the essentials to include when campfire cooking; can opener, cutting board, paring knife, spatula, tongs, serving spoon, tin foil, and a pot and pan that you don’t mind getting scorched on the bottom. We found that having a more diverse menu made for a more enjoyable experience. It was also fun to see how creative we could get.
-If using a canopy or EZ-up, pack an empty bucket and a ratchet strap instead of sandbags for weights. Fill the bucket with rocks from your campsite, put the ratchet strap around the handle of the bucket and the middle beams of the canopy. We use this method to allow more room in our car, we also like that we can lower our canopy and synch the ratchet strap so that the center of the canopy is closer to the ground. A great solution when a storm decides to kick up.
There are so many camping hacks and tricks that we can’t keep track. These are the tricks that we live by. They are tried and true. Getting ready for that first camping trip can be a little stressful, but once you have it down the first time the rest of the summer can be spent outdoors with nothing but you and a tent, it doesn’t get much better than that.