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Confessions of a Car Camper
Preparation is key to being a happy camper
By Heather Cameron
There are as many different ways of camping as there are tents. There are your back country campers who take along only the knapsack on their backs. There are campers who pack their satellite dishes and laptops. And then there are campers who are somewhere in between.
My family just happens to fall in that in-between area. We eschew anything electrical, sleep in tents and cook only with fire (since camp stoves and my husband never seem to get along) but we always use private or provincial campground sites. Friends who have been die-hard Algonquin Park backcountry campers for years (they even use the word “portaging”) refer to us as “car campers.”
Preparing for car camping can be hard work, but by being well-prepared you can make the getting-away-from-it-all experience much more rewarding. A number of websites offer helpful camping checklists (such as gorp.away.com/gorp/gear/ packlst_camp.htm ; familycampinggear .com/generic0.html) but you will eventually find the right combination for your camping experience. Through trial and error, we have found some planning tips that work well for us:
Save your spot. You can reserve sites in Ontario provincial parks via the Internet. Go to www.ontarioprovincialparks.com and click on the reservations button for a full listing of places. Each park on the website features a site map, so you can see what is available. In the case of Ontario provincial parks, you can reserve your space up to five months (to the day) ahead of time. That means that if you want to camp from July 2 to July 7, the earliest you can book your space is February 2.
Test your tent. Whether it is new or a trusted favourite, be sure to do a trial set up of your tent in your backyard before your first trip of the season. You don’t want to be miles from stores when you find out pegs are missing, fabric is torn, directions are incomprehensible, or your idea of enough sleeping space is not the same as your spouse’s. Very important: bring a ground sheet that is slightly smaller than the footprint of your tent’s floor or you may find yourself sleeping in a lake, not beside one.
Checklists are a camper’s best friend. Use your imagination to take yourself, day by day, through your trip and make a list of what you will need. For example, breakfast. If your tastes don’t run to instant coffee, you will need such items as a percolator and pre-ground coffee (and maybe lots of it if your day has started with a child and a 5 a.m. outhouse run). Itemize your breakfast foods and whatever goes on then (i.e. toast and the accompanying jam), dishes and utensils. Run through each meal and activity in your mind and consider what you need to pack.
First in, last out. When you are packing, remember to pack your tent last so you can get it out and set it up before you begin transferring your duffle bags, sleeping bags and bed rolls. This proves especially helpful if you are setting up on a rainy day!
Dual purpose. Try to make whatever you pack dual purpose. Rubbermaid-type containers are invaluable when car camping. A large, lidded container can keep your sleeping blankets and pillows clean until your beds are made up. You can then pull it up near the fire pit, line it with plastic and pack it with your dry firewood to make sure it stays dry. It also serves as a great bench or side table. A mid-sized container can hold your dishes when your travel and when emptied can be re-purposed into a dishwashing basin until the end of the trip when the dishes get re-packed.
Pre-wash your fresh foods. Clean drinking water is a precious commodity for any style of camping, so you want to use it wisely. Be sure to wash all your fruits and vegetables at home so they are ready-to-eat when you are communing with nature.
Light your fire. Bring enough kindling and logs at least your first fire in case the wild wood is wet or simply cannot be found. Be sure to check your park’s rules about bringing in wood (and invasive insects with it).
Kits and cards. Don’t forget to pack a first aid kit with some special additions for camping. Afterbite (to soothe insect bites), Polysporin, band aids and instant cold compresses can be your best friends. Remember to pack your Ontario Health Cards, too. Whether you are hitting an emergency room or calling the provincial health helpline, you will need to provide the health card number of the person requiring assistance.
Grill to go. Purchase a camping grill (with feet to adjust its height over the fire) and a camping kettle, pot and pan so there’s no plastic to melt. And don’t forget your oven mitts — the metal handles will be hot.
Portion control. Don’t bring along whole containers of foods — guesstimate the amount you will need and pre-pack it in a small Rubbermaid container. It will save you some space and good quality containers can sometimes foil even the craftiest of raccoons if you forget to put something away.
Bring your own water. Don’t just assume that there is safe drinking water available for free at a provincial camp site. The water spigots scattered around the campgrounds and the faucets in the bathroom often note that the water is not safe for drinking. We boil this water well and use it for washing our dishes but bring along our own drinking water.
Dual-purpose ice packs. Instead of packing a huge container of drinking water, bring along a series of 500ml, 1L and 2L water bottles. They are easier to handle, the smallest ones are compact enough for hiking, and, if you pre-freeze your water-filled containers at home, they make ideal ice packs until they melt into ice-cold drinking water. (But they can take a while to defrost, so make sure you pack some refrigerator-cold water for your first-day needs.)
Hand-y sanitizer. Another good friend when camping — besides the flush toilets at the comfort station (ahhh, the comfort of lukewarm and cold running water) — is hand sanitizer. After a midnight run to the outhouse or when you just don’t want to use up your precious drinking water, “magic soap” (as many kids call it) is quick, convenient and healthy.
Ready to go. My husband swears by his ready-to-go backpack. Before we leave home, he fills a backpack with water, snacks, hats, insect repellent and sunscreen. As soon as we arrive at the site after a long drive, he takes our kids out exploring (and burning off some pent-up energy) before we set up camp.
Take notes. Before we leave a park we drive around, noting the numbers of the campsites that are especially desirable. We record them in a computer file so the following spring we already know which sites we want to reserve. Now that’s planning ahead, campers!
Heather Cameron operates Edited Interiors, an Ottawa-area business that offers professional organizing, home staging, and interior decorating/redecorating services. You can contact her at 613 831-6398 or at heather@editedinteriors.com or visit www.editedinteriors.com.
This article originally appeared in the Summer 2007 issue of Due West/Due East magazine, a publication of Coyle Publishing Inc.
Copyright 2007, Edited Interiors. All rights reserved.