Tips for Your First Camping Trip of the Season
A few ideas to make sleeping in the woods more enjoyable
We spent the weekend enjoying our first car camping trip of the season, at Mount Fernie Provincial Park. It’s a beautiful campground in B.C. with forested sites and a vast trail system for hiking and especially mountain biking. We were joined by numerous friends, small children and dogs, making for a fun kickoff to the summer.
But after a nine-month hiatus from camping, we inevitably forgot some things. Learn from our mistakes! Here are our tips for your first camping trip of the season.
Test out all your gear
Cailynn arrived on this trip with some new gear, including a tent and a thermarest and sleeping bag for her toddler. She had tested all of those out before the trip, but paid little attention to her existing camping gear. Turns out her very old camp stove is on its last legs and should probably not have come on this trip. Test out all your gear — new and old — before you go. It’s a lot easier to make adjustments and alternate arrangements at home.
Pack more than you need
Our packing attitude for car camping is quite different from our packing attitude for backpacking. For car camping, we’d sum it up as “throw it all in.” Because of this mantra, Cailynn actually packed two stoves: her very old camp stove and her backpacking stove. Cooking crisis averted! Over-packing is definitely annoying when you’re doing the actual packing and unpacking, but it’s useful when you’re comfortably camping because you’re prepared for all that could come your way.
Use a checklist
Speaking of packing being annoying — make your life easier with a camping checklist. We’ve each made our own over the years, or we like this one from REI and this one from MEC. We try and keep most things on that list in a camping bin, to make getting packed up simpler. A list can also be helpful for planning out meals. We have a master list of camping meals we like and consult with that to plan out our weekends away.
All the effort is worth it
Camping takes effort! From planning ahead and booking sites months in advance to packing everything up, driving far and then setting up camp for the night, there’s a lot involved. Cailynn lives on the top floor of a walk-up condo and was cursing the effort camping involves on Friday as she hauled gear down several flights of stairs. But then we got to spend the weekend outside, chatting with dear friends, watching all our kids run around in the forest. It was worth it! And so we’ll pack up and do it all over again throughout the summer.
Happy camping!
P.S. If you’re admiring that boler trailer in the top photo (and who wouldn’t be?!), check out this feature story Cailynn wrote a few years ago about our beloved boler and the colourful Canadian history of these tiny travel trailers.
I’m curious about your camping checklist, what are your top three items for camping?