Photo by Vibrant Spirit
Camping-an all American pastime. No offense to those of you from strange far away places, like Canada!*
This coming Monday’s show on Frugal Coast2Coast will be all about camping, both RV & Tent. Between Lynnae and I we have both of those methods covered (although I won’t tell you which of us does which-you’ll have to wait and see!). Camping is such a great topic, with so many frugal & budget benefits that I will also be covering it here on the blog as well.
So help me out! What are your best camping tips & tricks? How do you save time & money while having fun? On the flip side-are you new to camping? Leery to try it? What are you biggest camping questions or concerns? We’d love to cover them on the air and here on Frugal Upstate.
Just leave a comment!
*Ok, that’s an inside joke with a good friend who is a Canadian blogger (yes Merlene, I’m talking about you!). She says she always winds up feeling like a second class citizen from a 3rd world country and has taken to calling her homeland “Canukistan” in fun. So I’m just tweaking her a bit! Love all my international followers, and love the vibrancy & differences we see when we compare different cultures.
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Oh sure… pick on the poor Canuckistanian!
My tip for camping is to prepare as much food-wise as you can.
For example you can pre-mix and measure the dry ingredients to make pancakes, biscuits, etc. and keep in a container or zipper bag and all you’ll need to do is add the wet ingredients when you go to make them.
Bringing along powdered milk make it easy to make milk for use in on site cooking and in coffee or tea. Just add water!
Marinate meat, poultry and even shellfish and then freeze a few days before the trip. The frozen items will help keep the rest of your food cool while it thaws and once again, makes cooking quick and easy on site.
I’m not a camper, but my boyfriend saves the dryer lint to use as kindling. Apparently it’s very good for starting a fire.
A couple of frugal camping tips:
I bring ice from home, rather than buy it.
Starting a week or two before we go, I begin to “steal” the ice from our icemaker, putting it into double-bagged grocery bags and throwing it into our deep freeze in the basement. Then the day we leave, I have two big drink coolers and one large “food” cooler that I fill with the ice.
Once we get set up at the campground, I send a couple of kids off to fill one of the drink coolers with water, and fill the other one with sugar-free kool-aid, lemonade, or ice tea that I pre-made at home and put into empty gallon jugs. That’s our drinks for the week!
I put our meat (frozen in “meal-sized” portions and in ziplock bags) in the bottom of a second “food” cooler, add a layer of ice, add other foods that need to be cold (all in ziplock bags), then more ice. The frozen food helps keep the ice longer, and I add more ice from the “ice” cooler as needed. You’d be amazed at how long the ice in the “ice” cooler lasts because it’s not getting opened!
Another option is to freeze water in gallon jugs. You can even put them in large drink coolers — when the ice melts, your tea/kool-aid/whatever (!) won’t be diluted!
Do as much food prep in advance as you possibly can before you leave in your full kitchen.
Microwave a few baked potatoes at home and then wrap in foil. Shove them into your fire/coals and let them roast/finish off. Aluminum foil is your best friend while camping. We’ve made makeshift pans for sauteeing squash, crumple and toss into the trash.
Parboiling rice and freezing in bags is great. Just thaw on your car’s dashboard in the sun. Or else boil in bag.
Tasty Bite Indian food is great for camping because you can eat it hot or cold, or with said parboiled rice.
Use two coolers on extended trips. One for deep freeze that you open once a day. And another for things like sodas that you open and close all day long.
Dry ice is cheaper and more widely available than you think!
Don’t get coolers with drink holders in the top. You lose your cool that way. Cut up a pool noodle and shove them into the holes. It will make your cooler more efficient. Also, putting a mylar space blanket on top of your food before you shut the cooler lid helps. I also put a sleeping bag on top and keep the cooler out of the sun. Those also help. (I used to camp in the desert for 5+ days at a time.)
If you take your pets with you, make sure to have a readily accessible high-value treat. If your dog gets loose, just lure them back with a treat. (Our dog got away once and hot dogs in cooler were sacrificed to get her back. Totally worth it.)
LEAVE NO TRACE. Pack up all your trash and leave it better than you found it. (Girl Scout axiom.) I cannot stress that enough. If you want your kids to enjoy nature, teach them how to take care of it, by staying on trail, etc.
Headlamps. They are awesome in the dark.
Thermos, for your hot beverages. Make extra and then you don’t have to turn on the stove again in the dark.
Join REI and get their membership dividend on your purchases. Totally worth it because when you do a big purchase like kayak, bicycle or down sleeping bag, you’ll end up with enough dividends to buy a pocketknife or headlamp or guidebook.
Field guides. They are really fun learning tools for flora and fauna.
Collapsible jugs of water. You can usually fill them in the last town or two before you get to your camping area. They are heavy though. (Water weighs 8lbs a gallon.)
We just got a pop up camper and have our first camping trip scheduled for later in August. I haven’t been camping in a VERY long time and am a little concerned about it! We will be going with friends who camp all the time so I’m sure that will be helpful. We will also be taking our 3 year old son. I look forward to your advice to help us plan our trip!
I have camped forever. The biggest tip I can share is think that your tent,stove,lanterns,sleeping bags if taken care of will last for years. Most of my equiptment was bought at Target when there were sales. I agree with tips from above. I would suggest a charcoal chimney $8.00 at Walmart.It allows you start charcoal with paper not lighter fluid. I store a large bag of charcoal in the empty plastic cat litter pail. This helps not get your car messy and if it rains the charcoal does not get wet.
I have a camping trailer now, but tented for a long time! I also prepare as much ahead of time as possible. We make stromboli or wraps at home, bake and double wrap them in foil and freeze. You simply throw them on the campfire to reheat, and NO DISHES!!!! We make taco wraps, chicken wraps, pizza stromboli, chicken BBQ stromboli….or anything you can dream up. A dutch oven is also fun(get the dutch oven liners it makes clean-up a breeze)
If you are going to camping in a tent in Maine, bring plenty of blankets and clothes to keep warm because it gets COLD at night. Even if it is in the middle of summer. 😉 The things you learn the hard way. LOL
My family has been camping for a long time and like tenting it(as long as the air mattress is firm). I don’t have any questions or concerns, but lots of tips –
-pack the rain gear where it can be easily reached to make setting up camp in the rain much easier (especially if camping with my favorite brother-in-law who brings the rain with him – ha ha)
-bring a few games to play after dark & when it rains, like dominoes, cards, travel board games, and books to read which make it easier for kids to climb in sleeping bags at night (crank flashlights are good for reading)
-if camping for a while plan on going to town to do laundry and buy food about half way through so you doing have clothing taking up too much space (do pack jeans & warm sweatshirt for those cool nights, but nothing too nice or you worry about fire ashes burning holes in it- happened to my daughter’s favorite sweatshirt)
-wash chicken & prepare meats at home- cut, marinate, and freeze
-plan meals with what will defrost & need to be used first
-if camping with kids, always bring toilet paper on hikes away from camp’ as they always have an emergency
-with little kids, bring shovels,buckets,& sifters,then give them an area (where no one will trip)at the campsite to dig for dinosaur rocks, build fairy houses, or whatever,and bring old rags to wash with. It will keep them busy for hours.
-Put food and trash in the vehicle at night, or you may be watching the racoons eat your s’more fixins from your tent (happened last summer in Ontario, Canada the one night we forgot to put the food bucket away)
-I could go on & on, maybe I will call in to the show Monday. But my best tip is to relax and have fun. The rainiest camping trip will still give you memories and is better than a day at work!
Freeze a half gallon plastic milk jug of water. These thaw more slowly than ice cubes. Bring frozen meats to use for dinners. The bags of ice from home are something we do. Save foil take out containers to use on the fire for cooking. Chimney for starting fires works great, as does the plastic container for the charcoal storage. We just got back from camping. It was great!
It’s best to try and avoid catastrophes. Wine bottles, corked after openening, do in fact LEAK. We were camping with the 4 kids in an RV, and I threw a corked bottle of wine up in the overhead in between some clothes so the bottle wouldn’t break. Glad it didn’t break, but the wine leaked ALL OVER the clothes. Thank goodness it was white wine! So once we reached the campsite (July 4th), I had to go wash all the clothes. It was also raining, so I had 4 kids worth of muddy clothes to wash too. So off I went lugging the clothes to the campground laundramat. We were camping with a newborn (God knows why) and I literally hadn’t slept in 5 days. Oops, not enough quarters for the washing machines in the bug infested laundramat. Off I went into the darkness of the campground looking for money. Nothing; everything closed. I saw a Coke machine and had the brilliant idea that I could get some change from it. I stuffed my dollars in, and YES! I heard change. I stuck my hand in the receptical and grabbed the change. And along with the change came a big handful of dead bugs! I had to throw everything on the dark ground and sift my way through the bugs to get my quarters. But I had my quarters and off I went back to the laundramat. I got my clothes in the washer and I’m trying my best to swat away the flying insects, and off in the distance I heard fireworks going off. There I stood – alone crying in the laundramat, thinking this is the worst 4th of July I’ve ever had. So another tip? Don’t forget your quarters.
We are big campers (just recently moved up to a travel trailer) and I have posted a few posts on my blog regarding camping ideas and tips. Here are a few:
http://thethriftygroove.blogspot.com/2009/06/packing-for-camping.html (packing for camping)
http://thethriftygroove.blogspot.com/2009/04/thrifty-thursday.html (fun cooking with kids or just silly adults at the campground)
http://thethriftygroove.blogspot.com/2009/05/tuesday-tips.html (thrifty camping tips)
Please feel free to use anything you might think your listeners would enjoy.
Nice Article. Have bookmarked your site! Keep it up!
Bring can of cinammon rolls. Cook in an orange half after you have the pulp out. Put down in the fire. Works perfect.