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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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How to Prepare to Set Up Your Camping Tent
For anyone living the rustic life on a far-off campsite as their yearly vacation, the trick to camping isn’t necessarily living off of the land: it’s living in your tent. If you were prudent, you brought along a tent that you know how to set up, effectively holds out moisture and insects, and provides a comfortable shelter for you and yours on your camping trip. But what if you’ve never tried it before? Here are some brief tips for setting up a tent the next time you go camping.
First, there are two ways to prepare, and you’ll want to try both of them. The first is to make sure you have a good tent in hand. If an old camping tent is available, make sure to take it out before your trip: check for holes, tears, and anything else that might compromise the tent’s functions as a shelter. If you don’t have an old tent lying around, make sure that you do plenty of research in order to find the best and most cost-effective tent available near you.
Once you have a tent in hand, you’ll want to make sure you know to set it up. Nothing is more frustrating than traveling all the way out to your campsite, only to find out that one small part of the instructions doesn’t make any sense and is ruining your experience. By taking out your tent and setting it up in the front yard a week or so before you go camping, you can work out those kinks ahead of time. If you get stuck at any one particular point, you can take the time to figure it out in a situation in which you don’t actually need the shelter.Setting up a tent usually relies on a few things: stakes, tent poles, and the tent tarp. Most tent structures are established by having you drive a few stakes into the ground. These stakes will typically have something attached to them – such as a loop – that the tent poles can then essentially “plug in” to, allowing the poles to bend and create a dome-like skeleton over your head.
Once this skeleton is complete, you follow the tent instructions and lay the tarp over the skeleton, making sure that it’s properly laid out and attached in every area. Then you’re free to unzip the door and climb in.
Each tent is different, but if you know how to put up a tent, you’ll have a head start the next time you take the family out to the woods. Just make sure you’ve read the directions already!
Photo Credits: candescent
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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
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Keeping Away the Creepy Crawlers While Camping
If there’s one thing that can quickly turn a nice camping trip into a miserable one, it’s an overabundance of bugs. Yeah, bugs – you know the ones I’m talking about – those creepy-crawly, overly-juicy, quick-footed insects that can get inside your tent or even your sleeping bag and cause a lot of ruckus with just a little bit of presence.
Part of you knows that heading into the great outdoors is the reason you should expect to see bugs. But you can minimize the experience you have with them if you follow just a few simple tips and tricks.
Create a home base in your tent. If you want a refuge from your bugs, you’re going to need a good home base, where everything is sealed off from nature – except the air, of course. Take some time to put up your tent before a camping trip to make sure that it’s clean, dry, and doesn’t have any holes in it – for now, you can plug up holes with some duct tape in order to seal out bugs. Make sure to clean out the tent to get rid of any already-existing bugs, and always make sure that you close your door right after you use it, so nothing crawls in with you.
If you focus on maintaining a bug-free tent, then you can put most of your items inside of it and expect to live a pretty bug-free camping life. Will this be 100% fool-proof? No, but it will minimize your bug problems.Come equipped with bug spray. Mosquitoes are among the worst “bugs” that can really irritate you during a camping trip. They don’t gross many people out, but they can wreak the most havoc on the good time you’re trying to have. So make sure you pack at least a full can of bug spray – you’ll really find that you need it when the sun drops in the sky and the mosquitoes start coming out.
Don’t let the fear of bugs get in the way of having a good time. Realize that many of the bugs you encounter will be harmless, unless you’re in an exotic location in which case you’ll want to do more research and seek more advice on how to beat them. If you do find a bug or two inside your tent, use some tissues and get rid of it. It’s that simple.
Photo Credits: Kevin Saff
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Making Your Camping Bed (And Sleeping In It, Too)
It’s no secret that one of the purported miseries of camping – as espoused by the willfully-sheltered folk who happily name themselves “indoor types” – is that sleeping on the ground is no fun. In fact, it can be downright painful. The experienced camper, however, knows that sleeping on the ground would be like eating a camping diet solely comprised of almonds and hot dogs: with a little preparation it’s not necessary. With that in mind, let’s take a look at how you can make your camping bed and actually want to sleep in it, too.
But once you’ve decided to bring a device like a cot or an airmattress, that isn’t the whole story. A bed should keep you warm, insulated, and dry. If your airmattress has a leak in it, don’t be surprised to wake up in the morning with your back on the ground. If your cot isn’t adequately insulated, you may find yourself wishing to be in your bed back home.
First, understand your options. An airmattress will keep you off the ground, but so will a cot, a futon, a foam pad, and even something home-made. So many people think about sleeping on the ground outdoors that they forget it takes very little action in order to rectify the problem: simply buy something for your bed that you can bring with you.That’s why you’ll still want to bring that camping staple so many enjoy: the sleeping bag. Most sleeping bags come with zippers that allow them to fold out like blankets. You can use this feature to spread out the sleeping bag like a blanket on your airmattress or cot.
Why not just use a regular blanket? Regular blankets work well, but they’re not designed for the outdoors. Sleeping blankets usually have lining on the outside that keeps them dry, sealed off from insects, and insulating well against the cold. You’d be surprised how much heat you can still trap with a sleeping blanket that’s been folded out.
Once you have your gear ready, simply bring a comfortable pillow or two from home. If you really want to stay luxurious, you can even bring sheets; it will feel like you’re still in your bedroom. Make sure to keep your pillow and sheets in a safe, dry place (such as the back of your car, if it’s nearby); exposing them to the elements can mean bugs, sticks, and moisture. Make sure to put together your bed after you’ve set up your tent: when bedtime arrives, you’ll be ready to slip in the covers right away, just like at home.
Photo Credits: Felipe Skroski
