13.  Camping Basics – the perfect way to have a good time and prep for extended time away from your real home

 

Is there anyone reading this who hasn’t at least been to a picnic in the park or someone’s back yard?  If it was a pleasant day with nice weather, good company, good food, and a comfortable place to sit then it is likely that the day was too short.  You probably would have liked the picnic to last a little longer.  Happy picnic days are probably one way camping got started.  Another way was probably people wanted to get away from home for a few days and couldn’t afford a vacation that included a hotel and restaurant meals. Then there were hunters and fishermen who wanted to spend the night in the woods so they could get an early start looking for that elusive trophy. At any rate camping is something that is both fun and a skill. 

 

To have a good experience camping requires considerable planning in advance.  Getting your camping supplies and skills fine-tuned really gives you a head start on living outside the walls of your own home.  It is true that camping is a choice with a definite beginning and end.  Actually living in a camp situation for an unknown period of time would be a harder on the nerves than a simple camping trip, but it would much easier if you had some idea of how to camp.  A good time to learn to camp is definitely before you have to.

 

A major point of camping is to enjoy some time away from home without spending a lot of money while living in a manner that is reasonably comfortable and safe.  Just like living anywhere else the first things you think of are food and shelter.

 

Your shelter for camping can be anything from your car to a tent to tarp tied to a tree.  We have even tied a large tarp to a tree and stretched it out far enough that we could park at least part of the car under the tarp.  That was when I had a bed in the back of the Suburban.  It was really nice to open the door in the morning and be under a shelter.  I had a chair there and a piece of cardboard so I could sit in the chair and put my shoes on.  Inside a vehicle is pretty cramped for sleeping, but we managed a full bed in the Suburban.  A vehicle is also bear and cougar proof, so that makes it extra nice.

 

An actual camper is nice, but they are expensive and you have to park them somewhere.  We would like to have a small one, but we haven’t ever actually had one.  It would be nice in that you could keep all your cooking supplies and bedding in the camper instead of stored somewhere in your house or garage.

 

A tent is great.  They have floors so snakes can’t get in.  They have screens that keep out most bugs.  I wish I could say they are entirely rain proof but that doesn’t seem to be the case anymore.  If you are camping where you might get rained on I suggest a tarp tied over the top of you tent.  If you do that in the first place it will make the rest of the trip less stressful.  Ropes and Bungee cords are what you need to for stretching tarps.

 

To set up a tent the first thing you need to do is pick the place.  Obviously you want a place that is as safe as possible.  That means you look around to determine where the water is and the lay of the land.  You don’t want to get caught in a flood! A place that has mountains or hills on three sides is a likely place for a flash flood.  It may be once a hundred years but a flash flood can hit – well in a flash – and you will not only lose your camping supplies and vehicle  -  you and your family might drown!  A recent example of that is Camp Albert Pike, Arkansas.  It was a public campground that has been there for years.  It has flooded many times.  Campers have lost their camping equipment.  Cabins built on the creek bank have washed away.  However that particular year the water came up so fast that people simply could not get out in time.  Children were ripped from the arms of their parents.  People ran into the concrete bathroom thinking it would be safe only to find themselves trapped inside as the rising water would not allow the door to be opened.  They drowned!  The river is really only a small creek by most standards.  The campground is situated in the middle of a horseshoe shaped mountain.  The runoff from any rain is always worse in an area like that.  When an extra heavy rain hits the flooding is going to be even worse.  That is what happened on that day.  My husband Jerry had built a cabin on the river there many years ago.  It still belonged to his family.  It had survived several floods, but that flood was the final flood.  The cabin washed away.  Thankfully none of the family was there at that time.  But many people were not nearly so blessed.  They experienced a nightmare that will never be forgotten even if their family survived. 

 

I don’t want to discourage anyone from camping.  I do want to encourage everyone to carefully consider the area in which they plan to camp.  If you are going to an established campground do a little research and see if it has ever flooded and what circumstances may have been in play at that time.  If it is not an established campground then it is especially important that you make careful observations yourself.  Is flooding a possibility?  Take it seriously!

 

Also, if you find a lovely meadow where you are free to set up a tent that also happens to be covered in fresh bear poop then you would probably not want to set up your tent there either! 

 

While a tent placed on the edge of river is pleasant there are a couple of draw backs.  First the noise.  I know, you probably like the sound of a stream.  The problem is that it makes conversation more difficult, especially if there are people in the group who simply don’t hear well with a lot of back ground noise. 

 

A lake front can be nice providing it isn’t a marshy spot where mosquitos will be a real problem. Even if you remembered the insect repellant it won’t be enough to stop the problem if you are in a mosquito nesting area!  And, who is in the group that might fall in the creek or lake and drown?  If there are small children in the group it is going to be a more peaceful camping trip if you aren’t constantly fighting to keep them out of the water.  I personally love to camp right on the lake whenever possible, but even I can’t stand mosquitoes trying to eat me alive.  Availability of lake side campsite, rocky shore to avoid mosquitos, and safety of small children are just some of the thing you need to consider when thinking of setting up camp by the lake. 

 

Another thing to consider when setting up camp is that you most likely won’t get everything you want in a campsite.  The main success or failure of the trip will be the attitudes of the people involved.  If someone wants to camp lakeside but winds up with a dry camp somewhere they shouldn’t let it ruin their trip.  Camping puts everyone in a different place doing different things.  The goal is to enjoy the time and learn a little that will make the next trip easier and more fun.

 

Pick your campsite carefully within the boundaries of what is actually possible.  Remember that it is only one trip.  Make the best of where you do camp.  A good attitude will go a long way toward making up for the imperfections of the wilderness.

 

Thankfully instead of flooding a more likely scenario would be water running under the tent during a rain which will eventually make it through the floor and you will be wet!  There are several things you can do to avoid that.

 

First, pick the highest and most level place available as a tent site.  It probably won’t be entirely level because nature isn’t level!  You just have to do the best you can.  Make up your mind to enjoy yourself in advance, and don’t spend time complaining about what you really can’t help. If you can afford an air mattress that will make sleeping better providing you remember to get an air pump to actually blow up the mattress!  A roll up foam pad made especially for camping will also help.

There is no way I can tell you exactly ‘how’ to set up your tent.  It came with instructions.  Follow them.  Also, most tents today have poles that are connected with an elastic rope, so they are much easier to set up than tents from years ago. 

 

Once you have chosen your camping site and tent site the first thing you do is set up the tent and put down the beds.  Great!  You have just made a home in the wilderness.

 

Keep in mind that the wilderness is very unpredictable!  There are dangers that are not the same dangers you face at home.  The dangers you face daily are more familiar to you, but they are still danger.  You won’t escape danger anywhere, but a considerable amount of caution will make any situation better.  That goes double for any unfamiliar situation.  Don’t go into the wilderness thinking you are visiting the pristine ‘Garden of Eden’ where the wolf and the lamb eat grass.  This is not the case.  You are going into a danger zone.  Wild animals are WILD.  Even that cute little chipmunk will bit a whole clear through your finger if you happen to try to pick him up!  If you feed the birds they are going to hang around camp and drop ‘presents’ on all your stuff.  I admit to going a little nutty with the camera when a wild creature happens to come near me.  If you have someone like that in your group do not hesitate to drag them into a safe zone or scare the animal away on purpose.

 

NEXT is food.  You need a kitchen!  It is very important to understand that your tent is not a cook-shack.  There are some very expensive canvas tents that are made to have a wood stove.  You probably don’t have one of those.  If you do have one I can’t begin to caution you enough about how flammable they actually are and how cautious you must be with fire! 

 

First to thing to consider is exactly what you have to have to cook the food you have. If you are blessed with some sort of portable table you are in good shape.  Set the table up and put set your camp stove on the table.  That’s it!  Unless of course you don’t have a camp stove.

Regardless of your exact cooking arrangements, it is really good to have some sort of table even it is just a couple of boards nailed to a tree stump.  If at all possible a tarp stretched above the table is really a good idea.  HOWEVER, tarps are flammable, so you have to be cautious with your cooking.  You can cook full meals on a camp stove without any more worry than you have cooking on a stove at home.  You have to be careful with everyday cooking as well.

 

If the weather and the area you are in allows it, you will want a fire-pit for a campfire and possibly for cooking.  This spot needs to be chosen away from trees and grass.  Dig a pit.  Line it with large rocks if possible.  If you are camping in a campground they will already have a designated fire pit.  That is a real help.  Under no circumstances would you want to build a fire outside the fire pit no matter how inconvenient and poorly designed it may seem.  Just work with it.  If you are on your own in setting up the fire pit, exercise extreme caution.  You don’t want to set anyone on fire, and you don’t want to set the woods on fire.  The campfire is one of the best parts of a camping trip.  You want to make it safe, useful, and enjoyable at the same time. 

 

Camp safety requires that you store your food in containers that will help discourage wild animals from thinking you have brought them a picnic lunch.  The less wild animals you attract the less likely it will be that you personally wind up being mistaken as lunch for a bear or cougar.  Put your food back in your car before you leave the camp or before you go to sleep at night.  Absolutely do not put your food in your tent. The old fashioned way is to sort of hang the food up in a tree which in theory keeps most animals out of it.  When I grew up in Alaska there were still tiny cabins sitting on stilts here and there in the wilderness.  We called them a ‘cache’ or ‘stash’.  That is where trappers and miners would store food and other items.  That really would never be necessary in today’s world unless something very catastrophic happened.  Also, at that time it was the wilderness.  Stealing was not really a big problem, and they could count on their stuff still being there when they passed that way again unless a grizzly bear had decided to tear the cabin off its stilts.  A cache might be large enough to sleep in when they passed that way.

 

I have heard of a game being played currently where people cache food or supplies buried in the ground.  They use a GPS to mark the spot.  I think people hunt for them and are supposed to replace anything they take out.  I have actually seen one that seemed to have had only beer in it.  A bear had apparently smelled the beer, dug up the cache, eat/drank the beer, and left a dreadful mess all over a lovely meadow.  So, I would say a ground cache may not be any safer from bears than a cache in tree or on a cabin on poles.