Camps

Preparing for a Family Camping Trip

October 27, 2010 By admin Leave a Comment

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One of the most inexpensive vacations you can take is take your family camping. The children will have a lot of fun and it can be very relaxing for the parents. Before you go you will need to prepare for your upcoming trip.

The first step is finding state parks where you can camp and determining how far you want to drive. Once you decide on a destination make your camping reservation, you want to ensure you have a spot to camp when you get there.

You will need to purchase a tent you may choose one for the whole family could or buy two, one for you and your spouse and one for the children. It is a good idea to put them together before the trip just for a trial run. Make sure that you have all the hardware and poles together in one place after you take them down.

Make a list of the things that you need to bring. You will need at least 2 coolers for you food and drinks. Decide what you will be eating and pack that at the last moment. You will need a couple of fold up chairs, blankets, pillows and sleeping bags. Do not forget medications for the family members and a first aid kit.

To keep the children occupied bring outdoor toys to pass the time. Plan to go on several nature walks and let them collect interesting rocks and things. The state parks generally have a nice playground area for the children to play on as well as restrooms with showers close to the camping sites. Since you will be outdoors for the majority of the time, for safety sake make sure to bring plenty of fresh water and fruit juice to keep everyone hydrated.

After camping you will be better prepared next time. This is a great way to bond with your children and make everlasting memories.

Filed Under: Camping, Outdoors Tagged With: Camps, Child, Recreation, Sleeping bag

Fun Camping Activities for Parents and Kids

October 22, 2010 By admin Leave a Comment

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Keeping children busy on the camping grounds is really easy if you have a little bit of creativity. Here are several ideas for parents to do with the kids on your next camping trip. Sometimes the parent needs to let lose and join in on the games and the kids will enjoy it as well.

Take the kids along the nature trail and do some bird watching. You might want to bring along a pair of binoculars so they can see what the birds look like high up in the tree tops. Have the children use indoor voices, meaning to be quite so the birds will come and not be scared by loud noises.

If there is a lake close by teach your child how to use a fishing pole. Show them how to hook the bait and be patient while waiting for the fish to bite. The first fish that the child catches by themselves will be the proudest moment in their life. The child will be so excited that they will be talking about that for months to come.

Before going on your camping trip make a stop at the local library and pick up a book of stories to tell around the campfire. You do not want it to scare the children so be conscience of that when choosing the book. Gather everyone around the camp fire, grab the marshmallows and skewers and read the stories out loud. The kids will be mesmerized by the fun story telling time.

Encourage each child to start a collection of natural things that they can find along the trails. Leaf and rock collecting is great for the younger children. Dry and place each leaf in a scrapbook. For the rock collectors give the child a special box for the rocks. Point out the different shapes and sizes of the rocks they keep, this is not only fun but educational as well.

Filed Under: Outdoors, Wild Trip Tagged With: Camps, Child, Family, Parent, Trail

Don’t Leave Home Without These Camping Trip Essentials

October 11, 2010 By admin Leave a Comment

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Camping is a great way to spend time with the family, enjoy nature, breath in the fresh air, and see new places. No matter if you are camping at a local family campground or going on an adventure in another state, a little planning in advance will make sure you packed all the camping trip essentials. Here is a camping trip essentials check list:

Food:
• Granola bars, trail mix
• Bread
• Cereal
• Crackers
• Eggs
• Cheese
• Milk
• Hotdogs
• Hamburgers
• Bacon
• Sandwiches
• Fresh fruits and veggies like apples, bananas, carrots, celery
• Canned beans, soup
• Peanut butter
• Water
• A few chocolate bars

Cooking and eating supplies:
• Frying pan
• Boiling pan
• Spatula
• Knife
• Tongs
• Silverware
• Paper plates
• Paper cups
• Aluminum foil
• Can opener
• Plastic bags or containers
• Dish soap
• Paper towels
• Sponge

Camping equipment:
• Tent
• Ground tarp
• Rope
• Mallet or hammer to drive tent spikes into the ground
• Matches/lighter
• Trash bags
• Camping stove or small grill
• Fuel, charcoal, fire starter

Personal needs:
• Sleeping bags
• Pillow
• Toothbrush
• Toothpaste
• Clothes, such as True Religion jeans
• Swimwear
• Rain gear
• Towel
• Soap
• Shampoo
• Razor
• Toilet paper
• Medication

First Aid:
• Band-aids, bandages,
• Tape
• Antiseptic wipes
• Sunscreen
• Bug repellent
• Insect bite medication
• Burn ointment
• Aspirin, Ibuprofen

Miscellaneous:
• Flashlights
• Batteries
• Camp chairs
• Camera, charger
• Cell phone, charger
• Sunglasses
• Coins for showers and vending machines
• Playing cards

NOTE: Make sure at least one relative knows your itinerary, cell phone number, and your vehicle’s license plate.

Of course, these are just suggestions and your list may change depending on your camping needs.

Filed Under: Adventure, Outdoors, Places Tagged With: Camps, Cooking, Outdoors, Portable stove, Recreation, Shopping, Sleeping bag, Toilet paper

Camping Safety

October 6, 2010 By admin Leave a Comment

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For many, the word ‘camping’ is practically synonymous with adventure, wilderness and hiking. The desire to stretch their muscles, breathe fresh air, leave civilization behind and live off of the land is what drives people to go camping. A getaway, a retreat. That means that hiking and camping are supposed to be fun, right? To ensure that you spend your trip actually having fun instead of worrying about what might go wrong, take a look at these camping safety tips.

Pack What You’ll Need

What will you need? If you don’t know, you need to seriously think before you go one step further. Camping and hiking place you in the wilderness with nobody but your group of campers for sometimes hundreds of miles–you need to anticipate everything you might need during your trip and bring it along if you’re likely to use it. A first-aid kit, sealing plastic bags to scent-proof waste, sunscreen, changes of clothes, sleeping bags, tents, food, water, a map and compass and a pocket knife are some essentials to get you started.

What you don’t want to do is to overpack and take along every little thing in case you might need it. If you can live without it for a few days and it doesn’t help in an emergency, you should probably leave it behind.

Know Your Destination

Read up on your camping area before you arrive. Get a feel for what kind of climate, wildlife, terrain and temperatures you’ll be dealing with. Ensure that you aren’t camping during storm season in this place. Check your campsite for signs of bears, fallen rocks or flooding, and if any of them are present, camp somewhere else.

Don’t Take Risks

Play it safe–don’t sneak up on wildlife to get photos, climb trees for fun, wander off by yourself, or drink water directly from the river. Store food and other smelly things in a bear box or hoisted in a tree. Prevention is the best way to avoid trouble of all kinds in the wilderness, and if you think ahead now, you won’t have to think fast in an emergency later.

Filed Under: Outdoors Tagged With: Business and Economy, Camps, First aid kit, Outdoors, Recreation, Recreation and Sports, Shopping, Varied Merchandise

Campground Manners

October 2, 2010 By admin Leave a Comment

Most people go camping to get away from society and most of the people that form it, but unless you travel to somewhere extremely remote, you’re bound to run into somebody else out in the wilderness regardless. Campgrounds and wilderness areas are visited by around 13 million people per year in the United States alone, and even if every one of them wanted seclusion and to be in a place with no other people for once, they would still have to share their camping grounds with others who have just as much of a right to camp there as they do.

Treat others as you want to be treated. You probably learned this advice from your parents; it’s true, particularly where camping is involved. Would you want some stranger walking into your camp and talking to you out of nowhere? Neither do the other campers, so generally even if you sight somebody else, you should leave them be unless they’re in some kind of trouble. Would you want strangers to cross through your campsite? Probably not! Make an effort to walk around other campers’ campsites instead of crossing through them.

The same rule applies for blaring loud music or laughing/shouting/singing loudly (particularly at night), using anything that flashes bright lights or burning a large bonfire at night that others might see from far away, playing games or using electronics that are noisy enough to hear from afar, leaving trash or even food scraps behind that others who come after you will know is not part of the wilderness, and dozens of other situations.

Use common sense and be considerate of how your wilderness neighbors will think of the situation rather than your side of things. The music is nice to you, but your neighbor is a captive audience to music they might not even like, and they’re in the middle of the wilderness so it’s probably the only sound for miles!

Finally, extend your courtesy to the wildlife as well, and do your best to avoid them so that they do the same for you. Remember, you’re a guest in their homes.

Filed Under: Outdoors Tagged With: Campgrounds, Camps, Campsite, Outdoors, Recreation, United States, Wilderness, Yellowstone National Park

The 7 Principles of Leave No Trace

August 24, 2010 By admin Leave a Comment

When you go camping, you’ll often hear the words “Leave No Trace”. Many campgrounds and nearly all wilderness areas emphasize that you must follow the Leave No Trace principles to stay there at all. The name says the basics—don’t leave your garbage behind or trash the area, right? But there is more to Leave No Trace than that, and if someone is going to hold you to a set of rules, it’s always a good idea to know exactly what those rules are so that you can do your best to follow them. Here is a run-down of what each principle means.

Principle 1, Plan Ahead and Prepare, states that you must pre-plan your trip so that you have the supplies, equipment, goals and knowledge of the area you are staying in to be able to camp there without any emergencies of the inconvenient kind cropping up.

Principle 2, Travel and Camp on Durable Surfaces, warns you to hike and set up camp on solid surfaces so that your feet, tents and the weight of your body while laying down to sleep don’t damage the ground beyond repair.

Principle 3, Dispose of Waste Properly, requires you to bury human waste at least six inches below the surface of the ground, preferably in a cathole.

Principle 4, Leave What You Find, forbids you from damaging the natural surroundings in any permanent fashion.

Principle 5, Minimize Campfire Impacts, asks that you use a fire pan or portable stove instead of building a campfire when possible. If you must build a campfire, disassemble it well enough afterward that no one who looks can tell a campfire was there.

Principle 6, Respect Wildlife states that you should not intentionally spook, chase, pick up, touch or feed animals you may encounter while camping. Report injured animals to the local game warden or Park Ranger.

Principle 7, Be Considerate of Other Visitors, asks that you not blare music or make excessive noise while camping, play pranks on other campers, hold sports games or other noisy, crowded events, wear bright and unnatural-looking colors like day-glow yellow, or intentionally spook other campers’ animals.

Filed Under: General Tagged With: Campgrounds, Camps, Campsite

Creating a Safe Campfire

August 12, 2010 By admin Leave a Comment

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If you’re going to be camping out overnight, unless you’re okay with living on jerky and trail mix you’re going to need to cook in the wilderness. Most people get the general idea for how to build a campfire: make a circle of stones, light the fire inside, and make sure it doesn’t get out. What they may not know is that you are supposed to clear the ground down to soil inside of the campfire ring and as far as five feet around the outside as well.

Building a good, safe campfire isn’t just about how to build it, though—it’s also about where you build it. Campfires should always be at least five feet away from your tent, gear and firewood, and placed downwind so that it doesn’t blow toward them if the wind picks up. You should never build a campfire near dry, brittle or flammable things, even grass or other parts of the landscape. In fact, at the driest parts of the year it’s not advisable to start any campfires at all. Many campgrounds have their own built in fire rings, which you should use instead of building your own, if possible.

Do not try to burn any pieces of wood longer than the fire pit is wide. Never leave your campfire unattended, even for a moment. When it comes times to put out the campfire, always ensure that it is “dead out”–entirely out, including embers and even warm coals. The best way to do this is to not only pour water onto the fire to extinguish it, but to mix the soil, water and coals thoroughly.

If properly created and put out, campfires can conform to the principles of Leave No Trace. However, many wilderness areas and other places you may go to camp do not allow campfires at all; in these instances you’ll need to use a small stove instead. Stoves, because they are self-contained and have an enclosed top, don’t present the safety hazard of sparks jumping out into dry grass or the wind blowing licks of flame onto other dry items as a campfire does.

Filed Under: Places Tagged With: Campfire, Camps, Soil

Leave No Trace With a Hammock

August 3, 2010 By admin Leave a Comment

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One of the biggest complaints about camping in a tent is that you have the ground right beneath you. Not only is it uncomfortable for you if the terrain is lumpy or very hard, but it’s difficult to follow the Leave No Trace principles when your tent crushes a part of the landscape. If it rains, your tent may not be watertight on the bottom. You and your gear could end up spending the night wet–not exactly the kind of quality rest hikers need to keep their energy up!

Camping comfortably and leaving no trace might be easier if you traded the tent for a hammock. The word’hammock’ brings to mind a sling may of netting or cloth that hangs between palm trees in some tropical paradise, but camping hammocks are much more suited for the environments you’ll be hiking in. A camping hammock is hung from two trees by canvas straps called “tree-huggers” that are designed not to damage the trees’ bark in the process, which makes a hammock far better at leaving no trace than your typical landcape-flattening tent.

The standard camping hammock is made of heavy-duty nylon, and with mosquito netting covering the top and sewn to the sides, it’s more like a pod than a sling in shape. You enter the hammock from the bottom, where there is a slit in the bottom where your feet will end up. You open the slit, stand up half-inside the hammock, lean back and pull your feet up, and the opening closes tightly with velcro straps. Last but not least is the rain fly–a tent-like covering that is secured over the top of your hammock to easily shrug off even the heaviest downpour of rain.

Sleeping gently suspended is much better on the back than sleeping on the hard ground. Camping hammocks are excellent for 3-season camping, but are not recommended for winter because the bottom of the hammock doesn’t insulate very well. This can be remedied by adding a down quilt or comforter to your little pod-nest; several companies custom-make quilts just for camping hammocks.

Filed Under: General Tagged With: Camps, Hammock, Patio

Domeland: Putting the “Wild” in Wilderness

June 17, 2010 By admin Leave a Comment

For some people, “camping” means leaving all civilization behind and living off of the land. No public restrooms, no running water, no cars or other luxuries to make life easier. If it’s easy, it isn’t really camping. If you’re one of these people, the kind that goes camping to feel like they’re the only person for thousands of acres of untamed wilderness, then Domeland Wilderness should be your next camping destination.

Domeland, located 55 miles off of Bakersfield, California, is an enormous chunk of rugged, untamed landscape named for its numerous dome-shaped bedrock formations. Domeland Wilderness is known for an abundance of colorful wildflowers, as well as extreme heat during the summer months. Due to the latter, the wilderness is much less traveled during the summer. Elevations of the wilderness areas range from 3,000 to nearly 10,000 feet, and some parts are much more rugged than others. Over 74,000 acres of Domeland were burnt in the Manter wildfire during the July of 2000.

As per the laws of a wilderness, no motor vehicles are permitted within Domeland; this includes cars, trucks, trailers, and even mountain bikes. Visitors are allowed to bring up to 25 head of stock per group, and groups may be up to 15 people in size, making Domeland an ideal place for those who want to truly live off of the land and rely on pack animals to cover the nearly 100,000-acre landscape. Hunting and fishing are even allowed under State regulations.

Wildlife includes several large herds of deer, brown, rainbow and golden trout, mountain lions, bobcats, American black bears, and a high population of rattlesnakes. Visitors to Domeland place themselves into isolated, very wild surroundings; you should always check with the local Ranger Station for any current hazards or conditions of the landscape before heading into the wilderness. Domeland requires no permit to enter the wilderness as a guest, but you must have a campfire permit for stoves, gas lanterns and campfires, so you should see to those beforehand as well.

Activities in Domeland include cross-country skiing and snowshoeing (seasonal), day-hiking, backpacking, camping, fishing, rock climbing and hunting.

Filed Under: Adventure, Outdoors, Wild Trip Tagged With: Camps, Domeland Wilderness, Outdoors