Camping DIY and hints

Maybe. Depends on the tent and on the weather. Lots of tents have no vestibule to protect items placed outside, and not all will easily take one or more pair of boots under the floor (if properly pitched = taut). You can leave your boots out there in a wind-driven downpour if you’d like, but mine are going to be dry and critter-free inside the tent.

Apparently I wasn’t clear. You turn the sack inside out, and place the boots inside the sack, so they only touch what is normally the outside surface. This prevents anything else in the tent from contacting the boots.

potato chips also work well as fire starters. Pringles especially. The oilier the better.

Might not be such a good idea if the cans are plastic lined. Organic lines, such as Muir Glen and Eden Foods, are starting to get away from using them, and you might think about bis-phenyl A when at home, too.

Ahh…now that makes sense. I usually leave muddy stuff outside under my vestibule but I know not all tents have them. Just make sure no critters move in.

I have a small tent so I don’t sweep it - just pick the whole thing up and shake the dirt out the door.

Are things backwards where you live normally? Is this the bizarro SDMB?

If a normal bag is turned inside out, this means the inside is now on the outside. so when you stuff the shoes in it, they are touching the original outside of the bag.

Fritos work great for this, too.

I suspect he was envisioning laying the boots on the sack, rather than putting them inside it. The tip as I first wrote it was not clear on that point.

Exactly. He made it clear in a later post. It did sound like he was telling people to turn the stuff sack inside out and place shoes on top and that made no sense to me. I didn’t think of putting them inside the sack. I leave shoes outside (small tent).

I don’t use ice, I keep frozen water bottles in my freezer. They then are the cold drinks for the last day as we use up the food.

You can also freeze a meal to prep. Skillet, first layer is bacon, second is hashbrowns, third is the eggs and fourth comes the cheese. Freeze all of this with the lid on. Come morning, just throw the whole thing over the fire and it melts and cooks in the proper order.

However, to take this back to the DIY concept (in other words - you did NOT prepare):

Trash bags work as ponchos for rain.
A slit cut in a blanket makes a serape, which is great for warmth and still works as a blanket. After this, I just started buying serapes and packing them.
Superglue works to hold a cut closed.
An orange or grapefruit rind can be used to poach an egg (scoop out the orange, fill with water, heat and poach. The liquid in the rind won’t burn through until your egg is cooked).
Artificial vanilla or avon skin-so-soft keep bugs off
A stuff sack of dirty clothes can be a pillow
Any steel can becomes a cook pot or a stove (depending on what you need)

When you arrive at your campsite PITCH YOUR TENT.

It doesn’t matter if you’re tired. It doesn’t matter if you’re hungry. It doesn’t matter if there’s a fun meadow to play in. PITCH YOUR TENT.

Because nothing sucks worse than pitching a tent in the dark. Or pitching a tent when it’s raining. Or pitching a tent when it’s dark and raining. And if you don’t get in the habit of pitching your tent the moment you arrive you’re going to wind up doing at least one of the three.

Even easier (and possibly even better) fried potatoes for breakfast…use canned potatoes. Something I would never consider eating at home – little potatoes, peeled, floating in water in a can in your grocer’s canned veggie aisle. Open the can, slice 'em, fry 'em. Serve with catsup and scrambled eggs and bacon. heaven.

Why not buy them already sliced? They come that way, you know. :smiley:

One hint I always mention is “Pack twice as much spices and seasonings as you think you’ll use.” They’re light, small, and can really liven up canned or freeze-dried foods. If you pack a variety, the third installment of Chef’s Surprise might actually be something you look forward to.

Before you even go, make sure you know how to SET UP your tent! A friend of mine borrowed a tent–one of those big canvas jobs–for a winter trip to the Eastern Mojave. Despite my suggestion, he decided he could “figure it out” when the time came. He spent 2 hours trying to “figure it out” in the dark, as the temperature plummeted. He didn’t bring a hat or gloves either. It was not pretty.

So they do taste good? I’ve only ever seen them once in stores, but my mom insists that my great-grandmother loved them. I was more amazed that the jars were exactly 100 calories.

My on-topic tips: Make sure that you have at least one warm hat that won’t fall off your head when you’re in your sleeping position- even if the forecast is supposed to be warm the whole time you’re camping. Better safe than sorry.

If you’re going somewhere that has small rocks or shells that people want to take home, bring at least one ziptop bag for each person on the trip- labeled with their name, preferably. Keeps all the rocks together, keeps sand out your pockets, and the label means no one forgets which rocks are their rocks.

My mom used to do that and they were good as well. I like skin on my fried taters so cooking extra baked potatoes works out just as good.

I remembered another thing. If you are bringing a pet make sure you mark their doggie beef jerky treats as such. My father said they were good but I was not going to eat them to find out.

I also do not wear shoes in the tent. Our tent has two neat little side sections just for shoes. There is one on each side. You can take off your shoes outside and zip them up in the little pouch. This pouch can be also accessed from the inside so you can put on your shoes before leaving the tent. It keeps them dry if it should rain and keeps them away from any critters. The outside part can be zipped up in a way that it can be mesh so it allows them to air out as well.

Good tips. FYI, you can also poach or hardboil an egg in a paper cup. We do this all the time.

The cans of potatoes taste fine. My dad always used to bring them on our camping trips. Me, I prefer regular potatoes. When camping with family, or with a group, I’m generally the first one up @0500 anyway, so I’ll just throw some potatoes on the stove to boil. Much easier for lazy old me than opening up 6 cans of taters. Plus you’re packing a lot less in and out not using the potatoes.

Another hint is making omelettes in freezer bags. Boil water, place all omelettes ingredients in the bag, boil for 6 minutes and presto. The only reason I like this method is that this way, I can be cooking blueberry pancakes and regular eggs and don’t have to watch the omelettes as they can be on a separate stove or single burner stove on low boil. They also stay toasty once you take the pot off the stove.

I have just one oddball tip: the most useful tool you can bring with you is a hammer.

The last time I went camping, we used the hammer for everything. Hammering tent pegs into the ground, of course, but oh so much more. We dug holes in the hard ground with it. We cooked with it (used the claw end to hook hot cookware out of the fire). We even cut down a tree with it (took a while, but we had no hatchet).

So, don’t forget your hammer.

Wash a greasy frying pan with dirt - scrape a good chunk of soil (sandy, silty river bank stuff is ideal) into your pan, rub it around with your fingers or a scrap of old rag, then rinse the pan - the dirt absorbs the grease and scours the pan quite clean.