-
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]:. |…
-
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
-
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.
-
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 Steps for Maintaining a Safe Campfire
It’s not until you see how quickly a fire can spread that you really start to respect the power that fire can have. When a fire grows, it becomes harder to approach it due to the heat. The best way to avoid campfire mishaps is simple: prevention. Preventing any problems from campfires will help you to avoid having to call in the fire department. Here are five steps for maintaining a safe campfire.
Step #1: Dig a proper fire pit. There’s a reason the fire pit is so popular – it works. Digging a fire pit is like installing your own stove in the woods. If you dig a fire pit, you are able to separate the fire from other areas, not to mention keeping the fire at a lower level, which means that you’ll be able to use items to cook over the fire more easily. Make sure that you leave enough room for a little bit of air to flow through the area.
Step #2: Separate the fire pit from regular ground using rocks. Rocks don’t exactly burst out in flames, so they help prevent the flames in your fire from spreading to dry brush around the fire pit area. It also creates a visible barrier that unmistakeably tells other people to avoid that one particular area. Try to wrap the fire area tightly to properly seal it off.Step #3: Don’t add too much wood at once. If you’ve ever been near a fire that has a lot of dry wood to consume, you’ve seen exactly how fast that kind of fire can expand. If you add firewood that expands the fire, it’s common sense that the fire will grow. Sure, there’s a possibility that this will burn down safe and sound later on, but prevention is all about avoiding those dangerous risks.
Step #4: Don’t feed the wood fuel that is bigger than the fire pit. The fire pit is a certain size for a reason. You can build a large fire if you want, but it has to be controlled. If you add large wooden objects that exceed the size fire pit, you’ll see how quickly the original fire pit becomes moot. Don’t do that. Instead, make sure your fire is contained in the area of the fire pit, with a little bit of room in the pit to spare.
Step #5: Keep effective fire-stoppers handy. It’s a good idea to keep a bucket of water and other means of stopping the fire handy, even if you don’t think the fire will get out of control. In case it does, you’ll want to be prepared. Make sure you’re aware of the best ways to put out a fire, and remember that fires need air to survive.
Photo Credits: rudis
-
Swatting Bugs: How to Get Rid of Insects at Your Campsite
Let’s face it. When you head outdoors, you’re likely going to come across one or two unfamiliar creatures that you don’t need pestering you. While some of these creatures can be dangerous, most insects and animals don’t pose an immediate threat. But that doesn’t mean they aren’t pestering you. So how do you minimize the impact of mosquitoes and other insects at your campsite so you can have the best camping experience possible? Let’s take a look.
The first insect on anyone’s mind when they start putting together the campfire is the ever-popular mosquito. The mosquito can be such a pest that even its very name conjures up images of annoyance and discomfort. Summers in the north will particularly see a lot of mosquitoes; so how do you get rid of these pests? Insect repellent on your skin will make a significant difference, but you’ll also want to light some strategically-placed insect repelling candles around your camp area. Make sure they’re in fire-safe areas. Once you have these in place, light your fire; that should be enough to keep a majority of mosquitoes away.
Once you move beyond mosquitoes, the pests become a little bit more threatening. For example, ticks can carry disease and generally pester you; they’re so small that they can be hard to prevent. Make sure a few times a day, you check your skin for ticks, particularly after waking up and spending a lot of time near the ground. Bring long, light pants if you think you’re going to be knee-deep in wild brush; ticks can often get on your skin while you’re wearing shorts and wading through some wildlife. Making sure you have your skin protected will also help you to avoid Poison Ivy.When it comes to larger critters, including everything from chipmunks to snakes, you’ll want to take an alternate route: instead of removing them, you’ll want to keep your distance. You don’t know if a mammal is carrying a disease, and you can’t be sure which snakes are poisonous. It’s better to take the safe route and avoid as many of them as possible. Try to clear out your camp area so that you can tell if anything larger than an insect is around you; this will help you to spot these critters. If necessary, be sure to leave your boots upside down and inspect your sleeping bags before you go to bed.
Sometimes, keeping pests out of your way can be an issue of common sense; simply try to evaluate your situation and come up with a solution that gets rid of the pests most frequently bothering you.
Photo Credits: Mike Burns
-
How to Build the Ideal Campfire – Part I
Any dedicated campers out there know that the campfire is the lifeblood of your campsite. Without it, you can’t boil water, prepare food, or have heat on a cold night. With it, you’ll be able to do all of those things and more – but the trick is, you have to know how to make a good one.
This article is part I of II in a series on building the ideal campfire so that you can have the most thorough information possible. Since part of creating a great campfire is to be thorough in your preparation and your knowledge, this initial research will be an integral part of learning how to create a campfire that lasts, provides plenty of heat, and gives plenty of flame for cooking. Let’s take a look at the steps to accomplishing this.
Tools to have handy: A bucket of water, a shovel, matcher/lighter.First, let’s tackle site preparation. You’re not going to just pile up a bunch of wood and set it aflame – that might make a quick fire, especially if you’ve got lighter fluid with you, but it won’t make a great camping fire. The difference begins with the preparation of your campsite.
For your first site preparation step, choose a location for the fire. Typically, this will be lower than all of the other areas – including where you have already set up your tents. You’ll want to create as much space as possible around your fire so that you can bring plenty of chairs up to it when night falls. You’ll also want to avoid low, overhanging branches.
Second, clear this location of debris and any flammable items. Get rid of garbage and other objects that might get in the way.
Third, pick exactly where you fire will be and dig a large but shallow circle, square, or rectangle. Keep the dirt in a nearby pile – dirt can make a good fire extinguisher for later on. This in addition to the bucket of water you have prepared will help you contain the fire should the need arise.
Fourth, gather as many nearby rocks and large stones as you can and make a ring around the area you dug. This will create a barrier between you and the fire, and since rocks aren’t flammable, will help control the fire and keep it contained.
Like building a skyscraper, much of the work into a great structure goes into a solid foundation that will accommodate large additions. In the next article, we’ll use this campfire site as the foundation for a great campfire.
Photo Credits: <a href=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/wili/”>wili_hybrid</a>
-
The Big Camping Checklist
If you’ve done all of your preparation and have packed nearly everything you thought you needed for your first big camping trip, it’s time to go through your checklist. But there’s just one problem: what if your initial checklist wasn’t comprehensive to begin with? If you start out with a bad checklist, you won’t necessarily bring all of the materials and supplies you’ll need to have a comfortable, fun camping experience. With that in mind, let’s take a look at some of the most important camping materials you’ll need to bring on your big trip.
For the Tent
Inside the tent, you’ll want the following things: sleeping blankets, an air mattress or at least sleeping pads, a flashlight or a lantern, reading material, and enough pillows to rest comfortably. You can also bring some optional material like camping cots, which keep you above the ground.
Why bring reading material? In case there’s a particularly rainy day, you’ll find that your tent is one of the most welcoming places you have. Bringing a favorite book or some humorous material to read can really boost your mood on those ugly-weather days. It should go without saying that you’ll need to bring a tent along with all of these items: do not forget the tent!
Food and FireAfter your sleep is taken care of, another high priority will be your stomach. There’s no point in going camping if the entire time you’re racked with hunger because the campfire won’t start, or you didn’t bring enough supplies to create effective meals.
Make sure you bring a cooler full of food that needs to be cooled: efficient foods include hot dogs, pretzels, energy bars, nuts, trail mix, and buns, breads, and bagels. You’ll also want to make sure that you bring along a camping stove to put over a fire.
When it comes to the fire, try to bring at least some matches or a lighter. It won’t hurt to bring a flint just in case you run out of either of those. If you plan on getting a lot of firewood together, bring a water-resistant tarp that you can store the wood in.
Medical, Communications, and Other Items
The most important thing on your big camping checklist? Safety. Communication with other people can help you stay safe, but you’ll also want to make sure you bring some medical supplies of your own.
In order to stay fully prepared, bring a Swiss army knife, a first aid kit, batteries for the gadgets you’re using, a compass, maps of your area, as well as phones and GPS devices if you can afford them.
Photo Credits: HGruber
-
Four Tips for a Solid (And Safe) Campfire
Having a campfire ready at the end of a long day is great; you can lounge with friends, roast marshmellows, and fight off the cold. But how do you make sure you have a campfire that doesn’t constantly need to be poked and prodded – and how to make sure it doesn’t get out of control on you? Here are four tips for having a solid – and safe – campfire on your next trip outdoors.
Tip #1: Build a suitable fire pit. Don’t build a fire on the ground – dig into the earth so that your fire has less exposure to the outside world. The fire pit should leave room for the size of fire you plan on having so that the wood doesn’t “poke out” onto the area near the pit. Make sure the fire pit is in a well-protected area that’s separate from dry brush and other easy-burning materials.
Tip #2: Separate the fire and the surrounding terrain. If your fire gets big enough, it can start burning the grass and brush nearby – that’s a situation you don’t want to have. So make sure that your fire pit is separated from the surrounding terrain from objects that won’t burn: use rocks. Work to make sure the fire is contained within the rocks – if you see a piece of wood in the fire that sticks out over the rocks, keep in mind that embers can drop out of your fire pit.Tip #3: Avoid simply “piling” wood – plan your fire. Once you have a little fire going, avoid the “constant feeding” of your fire simply by piling wood on top of wood. Carefully place your wood to keep the fire contained and stably burning. A great fire that will burn strong and stable without the need for poking and prodding is the “upside-down” or pyramid-style fire. Don’t simply gather sticks and throw them in the pit – use some thought.
Tip #4: Be ready to put the fire out at a moment’s notice. Have some water nearby and be ready to use tools like shovels to contain a fire before it breaks loose. Remember that it’s best to nip a fire in the bud – once it gets large, it becomes very hot and will be harder to put out. You can always start another fire, but it’s hard to put a big one out. Don’t let the fire break through the fire pit.
The more stable and safe your fire is, the better you’ll feel about having a fun, friendly time lounging around it.
Photo Credits: codymcarlson
-
How to Build the Ideal Campfire – Part II
In Part I of this series on how to create the ideal campfire, we spent most of our time looking at site preparation and planting a good foundation for the fire. Up to this stage, you should have a neat, shallow, but large hole in the ground surrounded by rocks, as well as a pile of dirt nearby and a bucket of water for fire extinguishing.
In this article, we’ll finally get down to the fire itself, taking advantage of our well-place foundation to make one spectacular (and practical) campfire.
Keep in mind the tools to have handy: A bucket of water, a shovel, matcher/lighter.
First, you’re going to need to gather wood, but before you even do that, you have to know what kind of wood to look for.
Understand the ideal structure of a fire: a lower layer of tinder, such as dry grass or shredded paper, a middle layer of small sticks, and an upper layer of larger wood that will keep you fire going. When you look for wood, you’re going to have to look for all three different types in order to structure your fire properly.
Gather these types of wood, avoiding “alive” limbs and branches as much as possible – they don’t burn as well as dead or “free” wood. Gather more than you think you need, because there’s a good chance you might underestimate how far your wood will stretch.Once you have plenty of each type of wood (you’ll particularly want plenty of small sticks for the middle layer), it’s time to build the structure itself. A tee pee shape is usually recommended, especially if you have longer sticks that can stretch out for a nice, wide fire. This structure allows you to easily pile tinder low and place sticks over it, allowing the wood to rest on other pieces of wood.
This shape is also ideal because it will allow plenty of air for the fire to consume and a natural progression of tinder to wood that makes for a quick-developing, long-lasting fire.
Once you have plenty of tinder and your structure in place, simply light a match or hit a lighter and get your tinder burning well. The fire from your tinder should be in direct contact with the smaller sticks of the next layer, which in turn should start burning and heating the larger logs.
Before you know it, you’ll have a great campfire that burns high, wide, and long! Set a cooking tripod over it for well-cooked hot dogs or find some more branches for roasting marshmellows, and enjoy.
Photo Credits: independentman
