Going Camping
I’ve never really been a huge fan of “the great outdoors,” but I really want to plan a camping trip.
My past experience with camping has been… minimal. I went most recently around 5 years ago, a trip that I have described in slightly more detail before, but still never gave a full tale of, and probably don’t remember well enough now to flesh out all the details. I went with my now wife and a group of friends up to Pisgah National Forest. While I won’t say this trip was awful, it could have gone significantly better. I sliced my finger open while trying to to split some wood into tinder. We went hungry the first night, because I never got a fire going to actually cook dinner. The next day, we bought some duraflame logs to get a fire going, but we still didn’t really have all the supplies and tools we needed. It was an interesting experience, for sure, but a little preparation and expertise would have made the trip much more pleasant.
Before that trip, I haven’t stayed outside overnight in a long time. I stayed in a tent outside a friend’s house one night, but that was because of a 2 day bachelor party, and all we really did that even resembles camping was sleep in a tent. I’ve made several attempts at camping forays with friends who had more experience camping, but each of those ended fairly early in the evening because we didn’t manage to get the tent up, or build any sort of sustaining fire.
The one camping trip in my memory that was an honest success was a church camping trip that I went on back in my childhood. We had probably somewhere around 20 to 30 people gathered in a field near a river. With so many people involved, we had at least a handful who really knew their stuff, so we had a pretty good fire going the entire time and it certainly felt like a temporary home in the outdoors. Then again, I was also a kid at this point, and my role in this trip was just going and having fun with the other kids while the adults did all the hard work. One other kid did slip into the freezing cold river while trying to catch a Frisbee, so that was some terrifying excitement, but he got out alright and everything went better than expected.
Otherwise, the closest thing to “camping” that I regularly had was staying in an old Airstream camper at Lake Murray every weekend during summer vacation. Those were some incredible memories, but to call it camping is a stretch. A fire was completely optional, since we had a fully functional range in the camper. Lodging consisted of comfortable beds and air conditioning, as well as a working TV that we had my PS2 hooked up to most of the time. This was far less primitive and far more comfortable than tent camping.
Now that I’m a little older, I’ve got kids that I think would enjoy camping, I’d like to try a proper camping trip again. Obviously, I would start slow. We’ve planned to take the kids out one evening in our own backyard, just to see how they do with sleeping in a tent. After that, we could try them down behind my grandparents’ house with the goal of not leaving the woods once we go down. If things get hairy, a warm bed is only a 10 minute walk away. But if they can successfully stay in the woods overnight without coming back inside, maybe we can see about going to an actual camping location. Pisgah would be nice if we could line up a better spot, or maybe doing a weekend on Lake Jocassee in combination with a boat rental.
Before we do a bona fide camping trip, I would definitely want to do some research and plan it out. What tools do I need? What sort of bag or storage options should I get to haul everything out there? I’ve got no shame using duraflame logs to get a fire started, but I may also need to bring some of my own firewood with me. In short, I have so little practical experience with camping and no learned sources available that I’d feel sorely unprepared to go in my current state. Perhaps the backyard camping with kids would give me enough exposure to figure things out on my own. Still, being an hour and a half away from home gives a lot more gravity to adequate preparation than being literally right behind my house.
If any seasoned campers out there have advice, I’m all ears. I’m going to make my own mistakes and learn from experience, but I would love to hear some of the problems that other people have had in order to anticipate and prepare for them.
My past experience with camping has been… minimal. I went most recently around 5 years ago, a trip that I have described in slightly more detail before, but still never gave a full tale of, and probably don’t remember well enough now to flesh out all the details. I went with my now wife and a group of friends up to Pisgah National Forest. While I won’t say this trip was awful, it could have gone significantly better. I sliced my finger open while trying to to split some wood into tinder. We went hungry the first night, because I never got a fire going to actually cook dinner. The next day, we bought some duraflame logs to get a fire going, but we still didn’t really have all the supplies and tools we needed. It was an interesting experience, for sure, but a little preparation and expertise would have made the trip much more pleasant.
Before that trip, I haven’t stayed outside overnight in a long time. I stayed in a tent outside a friend’s house one night, but that was because of a 2 day bachelor party, and all we really did that even resembles camping was sleep in a tent. I’ve made several attempts at camping forays with friends who had more experience camping, but each of those ended fairly early in the evening because we didn’t manage to get the tent up, or build any sort of sustaining fire.
The one camping trip in my memory that was an honest success was a church camping trip that I went on back in my childhood. We had probably somewhere around 20 to 30 people gathered in a field near a river. With so many people involved, we had at least a handful who really knew their stuff, so we had a pretty good fire going the entire time and it certainly felt like a temporary home in the outdoors. Then again, I was also a kid at this point, and my role in this trip was just going and having fun with the other kids while the adults did all the hard work. One other kid did slip into the freezing cold river while trying to catch a Frisbee, so that was some terrifying excitement, but he got out alright and everything went better than expected.
Otherwise, the closest thing to “camping” that I regularly had was staying in an old Airstream camper at Lake Murray every weekend during summer vacation. Those were some incredible memories, but to call it camping is a stretch. A fire was completely optional, since we had a fully functional range in the camper. Lodging consisted of comfortable beds and air conditioning, as well as a working TV that we had my PS2 hooked up to most of the time. This was far less primitive and far more comfortable than tent camping.
Now that I’m a little older, I’ve got kids that I think would enjoy camping, I’d like to try a proper camping trip again. Obviously, I would start slow. We’ve planned to take the kids out one evening in our own backyard, just to see how they do with sleeping in a tent. After that, we could try them down behind my grandparents’ house with the goal of not leaving the woods once we go down. If things get hairy, a warm bed is only a 10 minute walk away. But if they can successfully stay in the woods overnight without coming back inside, maybe we can see about going to an actual camping location. Pisgah would be nice if we could line up a better spot, or maybe doing a weekend on Lake Jocassee in combination with a boat rental.
Before we do a bona fide camping trip, I would definitely want to do some research and plan it out. What tools do I need? What sort of bag or storage options should I get to haul everything out there? I’ve got no shame using duraflame logs to get a fire started, but I may also need to bring some of my own firewood with me. In short, I have so little practical experience with camping and no learned sources available that I’d feel sorely unprepared to go in my current state. Perhaps the backyard camping with kids would give me enough exposure to figure things out on my own. Still, being an hour and a half away from home gives a lot more gravity to adequate preparation than being literally right behind my house.
If any seasoned campers out there have advice, I’m all ears. I’m going to make my own mistakes and learn from experience, but I would love to hear some of the problems that other people have had in order to anticipate and prepare for them.
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