Crap. Well if anyone can’t make it work just seach for “fat Tail Scorpion” You will immediately see the difference.
I take way too much when I camp, spent years camping with an SCA pavillion and such. Then spent years camping with Victorean army equipment and an officer’s mess. So when I camp what with the tables and chairs and enormous quantity of cooking equipment and drinkables and cigars and victrola and bed…
I love it.
Heh. I took a friend on her first camping trip to Death Valley . When I went to pick her up, she carted out TEN gallon jugs full of water. Since I already had 5 gallons, and we were going to be camping at Furnace Creek, I assured her that the extra water wasn’t needed. She was sure we were going to die of thirst without it, and we almost got into an arguement before the trip even started.
They both give me the willies.
If you have a vacuum sealer, use it. I vacuum sealed matches, first aid items, salt/pepper in canisters, etc. Not only is this water proof, keeping air out will let you store them longer and the vacuum sealing helps with space limitations.
The bags are also reusable so make them a little bigger than you need. Cut open as close to the seal line as possible. When you get home, you can re-seal easily.
Cerowyn,
That sounds like me - two different setups: one for comfort - when I will stay a while in the same location and one for lightness, ease of setup and teardown. Thanks for the pillow tip. That’s a nice one.
You gus have some great tips here. I never thought about carrying lint as a firestarter. It’s a great idea for damp days. I never knew the Comet trick either. I wonder if it works for earwigs? Happily, I am usually too far north to worry about snakes, scorpion and fire ants. I like the old t-shirt idea too. I have tons of old t-shirts and don’t like dealing with big, wet towels all the time. I do pack faceclothes and bandanas. They are multipurpose, dry quickly an if one gets torn I can dry it out and use it as a firestarter.
I once went camping with a friend who was of the “everything including the kitchen sink” mode. Never again.
That’s kind of what I’m guilty of. You might sneer, but when you want tortellini with pesto and fresh baked garlic rolls followed by a pinot grigio don’r come cryin’ to me.
We also have the camping tubs. It makes getting out the door so much easier.
Also, don’t forget a crucifix…trust me.
“An ounce of prevention” …
In Grizzly habitat, always camp with someone who can’t run as fast as you.
If you’re camping in bear country, DO NOT store food in your car. Bears can smell food inside vehicles–and if they see what looks like a cooler in your back seat, they can peel a door off with very little effort.
I tried wedging a cooler underneath my truck bumper one night because there wasn’t room in the campsite’s bear box. Big mistake. The next morning almost-empty cooler was laying about 20 yards away. The bear did leave most of the hot-pepper cheese, though…there was a small bite mark that indicated it must have been a little too spicy.
If your site is plagued by bees, here a fix that has worked wonderfully:
- Empty a plastic bottle, like a two-liter bottle or 16-oz water bottle.
- cut it in two pieces, nearer to the top than the bottom;
- turn the top half around and place it into the bottom half, like a funnel
- pour a little grape juice into the bottom (other juices may work but some types don’t) and set it on a table.
The bees can’t resist the grape juice. They will descend through the funnel and get trapped in the grape juice, dying a slow, deliciious death. If you’re a little bit sadistic like me (at least when it comes to insects), it’s amusing to watch the bees swimming in the juice and telling their bee-brothers at the point of the funnel to join them in nectar heaven.
Also:
Not sure if anyone has mentioned Wet Ones or waterless hand sanitizers, but having one of these is invaluable.
If you stumble over something–a tree root, a rock, a tent line–in the dark, put a lit votive candle there so you don’t trip over it repeatedly.
Even then, there are heavier and lighter reflector ovens, with a couple of feet of aluminium foil and a spool of copper thread at the ultra-light end of the scale; four disposable aluminium cookie sheets and four coat hangers at the light end of the scale; and a durable sheet metal one coming in at about three pounds. Beats the hell out of carrying a fifteen or twenty pound traditional camper’s dutch oven (a.k.a. kitchen sink).
Any tips for pitching a tent when all of your stakes keep hitting hidden rocks?
When your bottle of chlorine bleach is down to about a tablespoon, don’t empty it. Save it for the next camping trip. Take a largish nail, and tie a piece of string to it, about a foot long. Tie the free end of the string to the handle of the jug, fill the jug with water, tap a hole near the bottle of the jug with the nail. Hang the jug from a nearby branch, and pull out the nail to wash your hands. We used to keep a bar of soap tied in the foot of a pantyhose leg on the jug, too, and lather up from it, but I’m sure there are better ways of dispensing soap now.
Soap the outside bottoms of cooking pots and pans BEFORE cooking in them, to make them easier to clean.
So here we have palindromemordnilap with a camper’s bee trap, and BMalion with a penchant for pinot grigio on the trail. Y’all should speak with army worm wine maker Ray Reigstad of Duluth, Minnesota:
Tie the tent string to a heavy rock. If there are no heavy rocks available, then either tie it to your MIL, or tie the tent string to a sizable stick (or snow stakeif you expect that there will be no sticks available), then use rocks of whatever size to block the stick from being dragged toward the tent.
Move the tent.
(BTW, a couple of barrel packs inside the tent kept it up off us.)
The method Muffin described usually works. In some cases (depending on the rocks), if you have sturdy steel stakes and a BFH* you can drive the stakes through the rocks.
*Big flipping hammer.
Or enjoy the ride as the tent gets moved. One fine day I didn’t bother nailing down the tent while up top of one of the exposed hills near Killarney, ON. That night a storm front blew through, which dragged the tent with me in it a few dozen yards. Being woken up by this was a bit of a “WTF!” moment, followed by “Wheeee!” Fortunately, although abraded, the tent was not punctured.