Archive for the ‘camping tips’ Category
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How to Fix a Broken Tent
[The following is a guest post from How to Fix. There you can learn How to Fix a Dishwasher, how to fix a flat tire as well as how to fix a toilet]
Having a tent is an absolute necessity when you’re out in the woods – that is, unless you can find some other form of shelter. Tents keep moisture out, protect you from the elements, and separate you from the wild, even if the separation is a thin one. So if your tent breaks or tears while you’re out camping, you’ll probably recognize when it happens fairly quickly. The only question that remains is simple: how can you fix it without buying a new one?
There is no one answer to this question, because there is more than one way that a tent can be broken. But in this article, we’ll handle two of those ways:
Your tent tearing: If your tent tears, then duct tape is your best friend. It’s generally a good idea to keep some basic tools in your car – duct tape is one of them – around for just this kind of situation. Duct tape won’t only help re-attach the two sides of the tear in your tent, but it will continue to seal out moisture and its adhesive will generally keep the duct tape where you put it. It’s generally a good idea to use more duct tape than you think you need rather than less; don’t be afraid to go a little overboard. After all, you’re not going for beauty here – you simply want to keep your tent working. So make sure you have duct tape with you. The next time you head to the hardware store, buy a couple of rolls of duct tape and put one in the back of your car. It just may come in handy.Tent poles breaking or bending: The structure of the tent is generally held up by loosely-assembled tent poles. These aren’t always the most sturdy foundations to have with you, but they make for light packing and generally an easy tent setup. If one of them breaks, you’ll want to consider your situation. Can you possibly bend the pole back into place, or is it lost forever? If it’s totally broken, you may simply want to toss that pole out and keep your tent up with the rest of the poles. Your tent may be a little uneven because of this, but at least it will stay up, continue to shelter you from the weather, and will continue to work. Worry about a replacement pole or tent once you’re safely back to civilization.
Photo Credits: bgautrea
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How to Make Your Camping Trip More Exciting
Camping trips are meant to be exciting whether you’re going with your family or with a group of friends. Whether your group is adventurous or just looking to brave the outdoors there is something for everyone. If you’re off to a bad start though, what can you do to make your camping trip more exciting? This article will list a few ideas that can get your camping trip back on the right track.
Go Exploring
If you’re already at the campsite what’s stopping you from going to explore the wilderness? You never know what you may find out there and it’s a good way to take your mind off any hardships you may be facing. It’s amazing how even the smallest discovery can be exciting when you’re out camping with a group of friends. It’s important that when you go out exploring that you at least bring other person with you in case you get lost. Two heads are better than one when trying to find your way back!
Play Games
Making up different games is half the fun when you’re out camping with your friends and family. There are all sorts of games that you can come up with using the environment that you may have found, whether that is trees or a lake. From freeze tag to racing the woods is a great environment to play all sorts of games. Try to keep them safe because it could be very easy to hurt yourself in the woods, especially if you’re playing in the water.
Try To Rough It
Many people like to rough the great outdoors when they go camping. To them this can either mean being completely helpless to just have to catch your own dinner, whether that is a fish or whatever. This creates a sense of isolation; some people love this feeling because camping is a way to get away from the hustle and bustle everyday life.
Look For Wildlife
Looking for animals is great fun in the woods because often times they’re smart enough to stay away from you making it hard for to observe them. This can even be turned into a competition of who can find whatever animal first. It’s important that if you do seek out wildlife that you don’t anger it. Even the smallest animals can be dangerous if they attack you, especially if you don’t have the proper first aid.
Remember, camping trips are meant to be exciting, don’t just go outside put up the tent and go to sleep. Try to have some fun, catch some dinner, explore, there are endless possibilities waiting for you in the great outdoors.
Photo Credits: TheNickster
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Killing Time On a Camping Trip
It’s an ideal scenario: you’ve finally gotten the family away from the distractions of daily life back in the city, you’ve cleared enough time to have a great vacation, and you’ve brought all of the amenities you need to enjoy a comfortable camping trip. Then, your first morning, you wake up, fire up breakfast, lounge around on a chair, and the thought hits you:
What now?
It’s a perfectly normal situation to encounter, and it simply means that even while you’ve put aside some time for fun, you haven’t decided what to do with that time yet. Here are some ways for you to enjoy a camping trip and “kill time” the most fun and relaxing way possible.
First, make sure before your camping trip that you know what kind of activities are available in your camping area. If you’ve decided to “rough it” and head out into some deep, desolate woods, that’s fine, but you’ll need to define some activities ahead of time for that trip as well. Is there a body of water nearby? Are there boats to rent, jet skis available, good hiking trails, bikes to rent? Just asking yourself a few of these questions ahead of time will help you get started on the right foot.
Second, don’t waste time making decisions. It’s all too common for people to turn into “decisions, decisions” mode instead of simply taking action early and often. If you face a choice of fishing, hiking, or biking your day away, and family members are undecided on which to do, try this: make a decision for yourself and invite others to come along. Get your feet moving and get the activities under your belt. You’ll find that this kind of active momentum will probably carry you through the rest of your day.Third, know when it’s time to relax. If you’ve been active all day, you can still live a “full day” without staying active – it might be time to kick up your feet, light a campfire, and listen to some ghost stories. It’s one thing to relax when you’re stressed, but it’s another thing completely to relax after an exhausting day of fun, exercise, and activity. You’ll feel like you’re relaxing deeper then ever before and you’ll get a better night’s sleep.
If these sound like good ways to spend your next vacation, look into having your own camping trip, and then customize the trip to suit your tastes. Adventurers can find plenty of adventure in the outdoors, while relaxers will enjoy campfires and quiet nights under the stars. It’s up to you to decide how you’ll “kill your own time.”
Photo Credits: .:[CT]:.|.:[CB]:. |…
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Tips for Women: How to Camp Comfortably
We all know that any given woman is capable of accomplishing the same things outdoors as any given man, and that what makes a good camper is not only attitude, but skill. Either gender is capable of developing both. But when it comes to camping comfortably, it would be just plain wrong to act like there are no differences between men and women, and it’s fair to say that women have higher needs for comfort than many men. With that in mind, here are a few tips for the adventurous women out there.
First, getting a good’s night sleep during a camping weekend should be considered the most vital aspect of your comfortable camping experience. If you wake up with a sore back, it’s going to ruin the rest of your day. But if you wake up like you wake up out of your bed at home, you should feel absolutely fine and have more energy to accomplish the things you want to accomplish while camping that day.
With that in mind, be sure to focus on a few essential things: padding, insulation, and dryness. Padding simply refers to the type of bed you might be using – if you can bring along an air mattress with a gadget for easily pumping it up, you should have no problem sleeping on it. For insulation, make sure you have a comfortable sleeping bag that adequately traps your body heat. And when it comes to dryness, take extra precautions to keep both your tent and your equipment of of moisture’s way.Next, think about the kind of equipment you’ll be using during the daytime that will change your camping experience. For example, what luxury at home can’t you live without? If it’s a shower, you can find portable camping showers that function similar to showers at home, or simply find a campsite shower on a campground. It’s usually a good idea to try out a night of camping out in your backyard, without the conveniences at home except the ones in your bag, to get an idea of how you’ll fare when you’re camping. Make sure to bring a notepad to keep track of all of the things you believe you’ll need and that which you won’t need to bring on your trip.
Having a comfortable camping experience is all about preparation. As long as you have your bases covered, you should have a great experience that feels like you’re at one with nature, not constantly fighting it by tossing and turning all night.
Photo Credits: russelljsmith
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Three Essential Camping Safety Tips for Families
Depending on just how daring you are, your camping trip with your family might or might not fraught with potential hazards. These hazards don’t necessarily refer to the minor inconveniences that come with bug bites or sleeping on a harder surface – instead, the more recklessly you camp, the more you expose your family to real danger. That’s why you’ll want to make sure you camp the right way from the first time on. These three camping safety tips will help you be prepared for camping hazards, hopefully leading to a safe and enjoyable camping trip for you and yours.
- Tip #1: Set clear rules for the campfire.
- One of the most obvious hazards involved with campfires. If you have smaller children who are in the stage of their life when their legspeed far exceeds their common sense and they feel like they have to explore, you’ll have to make it explicitly clear that the fire pit is not the place to explore. The campfire serves both practical and aesthetic purposes -it doesn’t need to be played with.
Once you’ve established clear boundaries for your children, give them viable alternatives to enjoy when it’s time to light the fire. Toys, stories, and even a portable video game can help them keep their mind occupied – and away from the fire. Remember to be acutely aware of where your children are once you light the fire.
- Tip #2: Scout out water yourself first.
If you’re near a new lake, pond, or river and aren’t exactly sure about issues like water depth, temperature, or potential hazards like animals or insects, you’ll want to take a dip yourself to make sure that everything will work well for your children. In destinations with higher traffic, this won’t typically be an issue. If you’re a little further out into the American frontier, however, you’ll want to make sure to act as the scout for your family.
- Tip #3: Make sure your children are aware of the dangers of provoking animals.
Even seemingly harmless creatures might carry diseases, so it’s important to make sure your children know how to react when they come across an animal. Larger mammals like raccoons can be potentially deadly – don’t just leave these situations to nature. Even if animals are generally scared away when they detect human activity, this doesn’t mean you shouldn’t let your children know about animals. Don’t send them into situations where they might confront a dangerous animal.
Photo Credits: Joi
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The Tent-less Outdoor Sleeping Guide
For some people, the definition of “rustic” means simply heading out into the woods – even if you bring a camper with a bathroom, a sink, and a microwave. For others, “rustic” means an experience that at least has some amenities like tents to keep your dry and covered from rain. But for the die-hard campers, there’s only one definition of rustic: tent-less camping, including true under-the-stars sleeping. If you’ve always wanted to do this, here’s your guide.
What to bring: Even if you’re not bringing a tent, you’ll need to bring something in order to keep you warm and separate your back from the hard, rocky ground. Many people bring a simple sleeping bag and sleeping pad, and possibly a camping cot, in order to sleep outdoors.
The good thing about sleeping without a tent is that you can stay warm near – but not too near – a fire. Even so, you’ll want to stay warm for the entire night, including after the fire dies down on its own. Make sure you bring enough to keep you warm and relatively comfortable when you sleep on the ground.
As for your pillow, what you do will be up to you. You can’t exactly lay your pillow down on the ground, so try to bring some sort of tarp or bag that can separate your pillow from the dirt.Watch the weather: When you’re thinking about camping in a tent, knowing it’s going to rain is less important knowledge than when you’re sleeping outdoors. You’ll want to be sure that a high-pressure system is moving through the area you intend on sleeping in; these systems keep things clear – and usually provide for better views of the stars anyway. If there’s going to be rain, you probably won’t be able to have a good night’s sleep, so you might want to consider throwing in the towel and simply sleeping under a tarp or simply a tent.
All in all, sleeping outdoors can be a pleasant experience, but it’s not without its risks. You’ll want to be aware of local insects and wildlife before you sleeping without shelter. When in doubt, simply sleep in your tent so that you can stay dry and not worry about everything that comes from sleeping outdoors. You might just be glad you did.
Photo Credits: anoldent
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Selecting a Camping Location
Regardless of which tiny little piece of land you choose for your camping location, the one that you should know is that the options are endless. What do you prefer to do during your next big trip? Go fishing, hiking, or boating? Many camping locations offer that and then more. But, just because there are many spots available for camping, you shouldn’t just pack you’re camping accessories to run off to the first camping spot you come across. Lots of thought goes into choosing a camping location.
One of the first things that you will need to know is the accessibility to the camping spot. This is even truer if you camp with an RV. Consider how you intend to get to the camping spot. Will you be parking and then walking or will you be able to drive right up, these are very important considerations. If you have to park and then walk, you might want to find out how far you are going to have to walk considering that you likely brought a lot of gear with you.
The view can also be taken into consideration as there is no use going camping in a spot where there is no view when there are many beautiful camping spots around you! After all, you didn’t go camping and put forth all of this effort to not have the best view possible. Remember to check if there is access to clean water for you to use during your camping trip. If there is no water, you will have to pack all the water for your needs and to put out the campfire that you make.To make a fire you are going to need firewood. Inquire about firewood when you either make reservations or when you check in. You will want to make sure that there is ample access to firewood at all times and one where you don’t actually intend to carry all the wood to the camping spot! Look for a camping site that has plenty of dead wood around to make it easier to build a fire.
Most important, avoid the ‘uncharted areas’ when choosing a camping location. It can be both difficult and dangerous to camp in spots which are not established. There are many reasons for this but the most important reason is bears. If you do decide that you are the adventurous type then you should certainly make sure that the area around you is level and free of rocks. Check while it is light out to see if there are any drop off points and such. These things are already taken care of at an established camping ground. This is to make sure that you are safe and when you walk around at night that you don’t tumble down a hill or something worse.
The best places to look to choose a camping location would be in the local state parks, national forests, conferring with friends who have gone camping, and of course through the Internet.
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4 Things to Do During Camping ‘Downtime’
Let’s face it: even on your most active day of camping – fishing, hiking, boating, building fires – there’s still going to be some downtime. After all, even the U.S. Marines enjoy a certain amount of free time every day. If your day has been active enough, you might only want to spend your downtime eating and resting, but if you have a little bit of reserve energy, you might just feel a little bored. Here’s how you can cure that boredom out on the campsite.
- Constellation spotting – Constellation guide books are easy to buy. If you’ve never really done any serious stargazing, you should feel free to take a gander up at the stars and try to identify as many constellations as possible. If you’re exhausted from activities all day, you can even do this on your back. Just be careful that you don’t fall asleep outdoors! Stars are clearer out in the country, where there’s less light interference here on Earth to drown them out.
- Roasting marshmallows – This is perhaps the hallmark camping activity. Roasting marshmallows doesn’t take a lot: a fire, a stick, a marshmallow, and of course some graham crackers and chocolate bars to go with it. You can even make S’mores for everyone else if they’re too tired to do anything, seeing if you can get your marshmallow at just the right temperature.
- Talk – The campfire is one of the greatest places to have a conversation. Not in it, of course, but around it as everyone gathers. There is a certain psychiatrist’s-office effect in looking at the fire and not directly at anyone else: after all, it might be dark anyway. Talking around the campfire is usually done with friends, so the conversations tend to get a little deeper than smalltalk. Of course, there is nothing more engrossing than a good conversation, and you can do it while sitting in a chair under a blanket.
- Play cards – A flat surface and some willing participants are all you need for this easy activity. Oh, and a deck of cards, of course. A quick game of poker can be great for just before bedtime, and nighttime means that it will be harder for others to see your cards.
The spirit of “downtime” usually means that people aren’t exactly willing to volunteer for a lot of exercise-heavy activities. But that doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy yourself while sitting down or even lying down.
Photo Credits: parl -
Five Reasons to Bring a Swiss Army Knife
Many of us marvel at television shows like the Discovery Channel’s “Man vs. Wild” and marvel at all of the things the survivalists are able to accomplish with so little support out in the wilderness. But there’s a common denominator to many of these shows – and to better survival, in general – that helps explain their success.
Their knife.
Any knife has a million and one uses in the wild, but a quality knife like a Swiss Army Knife, with its variety of blades and options, is even more practical. With that in mind, here are five reasons to bring a Swiss Army Knife on your next camping trip.
1. Scissors.
Each Swiss Army Knife comes with a small scissors. These scissors might seem superfluous indoors, but it’s only out in the wild where you discover the kind of help they can offer. Whether you’re repairing tents or untying knots, it’s definitely more practical to have a small pair of scissors in your back pocket.
2. Fold-away blades.
It’s not only convenient to have a variety of blades and tools at your disposal, but being able to fold them away safely is a major plus. You can keep all of the different tools and blades tucked away in your back pocket, saving you both worry and space. A Swiss Army Knife can be like having a toolbox the size of a Chicken McNugget.
3. The knife, stupid!
Don’t forget the benefits of a knife – whether you’re cutting meat, gutting a fish, shaving bark, or peeling an apple. The chances aren’t very good that you’ll find yourself in a life-or-death situation on your next camping trip, but it can’t help to be prepared while enjoying the benefits of a strong blade.
4. Preparing for the unexpected.
If you’re really venturing far into the wilderness for a more rustic camping experience, the chances are good that you’ll encounter something you didn’t plan for. A simple knife is definitely beneficial, but a knife with all of the options of a Swiss Army Knife will help you feel that much more prepared.
5. Getting used to the outdoors.
It’s not the same “outdoors” experience when you bring a camper into the woods and enjoy all of the same luxuries you have at home. Sometimes, it’s better to get out there, use tools you wouldn’t otherwise use, and explore your “survivalist” side.
There are more reasons to bring a Swiss Army Knife along with you on your next camping trip – this is just a small sampling. To explore more of the reasons, why not make a purchase and get off of the couch and into the woods?
Photo Credits: Alesist
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How to Stay Safe During Your Camping Trip
Camping can be a dangerous undertaking because it requires you to spend an extended time in the great outdoors. If you’re planning to take your children camping with you, then you need to spend extra time examining certain precautions that you need to take. What should you worry about when you’re about ready to go, though? This article will give you a few common concerns and what you should do to prepare for them.
Watch the Weather
Being outdoors, it’s very important that you pay very close attention to the forecast when you’re going camping. If you’re going in the winter months it can be extremely dangerous if you camp in the midst of a snowstorm because you could easily run out of food and have no way of getting back to civilization. Be sure to watch the weather reports and if you’re already at your campsite you can always ask any rangers or other campers you see what the forecast looks like.
Bring the Right Supplies
Brining supplies with you can help you feel much safer during your trip as it offers you a backup and can be used anytime an unexpected problem occurs. Common supplies include: bug spray, extra food, and medications. It’s extremely important that you bring any medication that a family or friend needs in case they have any issue during the trip. You should also bring a first aid kit as it’s very easy to be injured by falling or possibly by an animal in an extended visit.
Plan Ahead
Perhaps the best thing you can do before going on your camping trip is planning ahead. Plan things like where you’re going to camp and for how long you’re going to stay. This planning should include both of the previous items, watching the weather and considering the essential supplies. It’s important that you think of any possible problem that can occur while you’re camping and be ready to address it accordingly.
Use Common Sense
Not using common sense is probably the cause of most problems that occur in the woods. Don’t attempt to do anything that could be potentially fatal, and make sure you follow basic camping guidelines such as leaving food out near or inside of the tents. With a little common sense it should be easy for you to avoid any problems that you could experience.
If you follow the above advice it should be easy for you to plan a fun and safe camping trip for you and your family.
Photo Credits: Omer Simkha
