r/camping

I'm into visiting the national parks so I often fly out to different parks to visit. I recently decided I was interested in a jetboil over a hobo stove so I can make my dehydrated meals a lot faster. It's great for camping in areas around where I live and when I'm solo I can often even use a single canister for multiple trips (though I always have a backup).

This presents a problem for when I travel to national parks or other rather remote areas and have to fly in rather than drive in. You can't take fuel canisters on a plane, so what should I do if there's still quite a bit of perfectly usable fuel left? It feels wasteful to just let the rest burn up.

Here's the situation - I recently moved in to a neighborhood that borders a little regional park. I often times like to set my tent up and camp in my backyard but my neighbor just let me know that a skunk lives in my backyard and I've seen the fella walking around the yard at night sometimes. Would you set the tent up and camp or just leave the yard to the skunk. I really don't want to get sprayed but I'd imagine that as long as I'm just in my tent, it's not going to randomly spray. What do you yall think?

Hey campers,

First off- don't laugh at me! I am a bit of an anxious person and an overthinker with some OCD traits, so bear safety can easily trap me in a loop. I’m really curious where people draw the line between common-sense caution and total paranoia when car camping in campgrounds.

On my last trip, my less-experienced guests were stressing out and asking me a million hyper-specific questions before bed. Because of my own overthinking, it really made me wonder how far people actually take these rules in the wild.

For example, how do you handle things like:
The Cooking Jacket: Wearing a fleece at night that you wore while eating dinner or sitting right by the fire (not actively handling raw meat, but definitely in the "food zone"). Do you sleep in it?

Smoke and Clothes: A shirt that was hanging on a line near the fire pit to air out while dinner was happening. It smells heavily of woodsmoke and campfire...

The Random Crumb: A couple of tiny crumbs of a trail mix bar fall on your lap right before bed. And so on…

Personally, I manage my anxiety by having a strict structural habit of changing completely into "night clothes" and "day clothes" so I don't have to overthink it.

But it got me thinkin. So far, even where I've camped in the Adirondacks, there weren't any drive-in campgrounds I’ve camped at, that banned storing food in your locked car—meaning the black bears there aren't that bold. I even stayed at a place in the Florida Springs where they provided metal bear boxes, but the rangers said a locked car trunk was fine too. So I let myself relaxed for wtvr might have stayed in the car unintentionally…
If the rangers are okay with cars, are the bears really going to sniff out a smoke-infused hoodie inside a tent?
Where do you draw the line between "you can't be too careful" and overthinking it? Do you change down to the skin before bed, or do you relax a bit if you're in an area where car-storage is allowed?

And in places where the bears are bolder?

Any insight will be helpful…

Obviously you're not supposed to do this, but I know sometimes idiots will burn trash like plastic wrappers and Styrofoam on fire rings. When I come camp on the same site after them, am I putting my health at risk when I cook in a fire ring then? I'm concerned about the toxic ash that could be deposited from burned trash on the grate and in the pit itself. Is there anything I can do to keep myself and my loved ones safe? How best can I clean out the pit and the grates?

There's so many options, and I end up learning one or trying to, screwing it up, then forgetting how to do it, then realizing it was because it was too advanced.

Is there just a very simple thing to follow for beginners like prioritized from most important to know along with their uses.

Like, "1. shelter is most important so the first knot is between two trees called a "xyz knot"" then "2. next importance is to make sure bears can't get ur food, so this knot is up on a tree branch to hang food from, here's the "abc knot" for how to tie it to the branch and here's the "cde knot to tie it to your food""

Is there anything like that?

Thank you very much!

I have been car camping for years and usually just sleep in a hammock under a cheap canopy. It has worked better than most legitimate tent situations for sleeping arrangements because it’s 100% guaranteed waterproof and super easy to setup. It also allows complete air flow, and holds you off the ground at night (which is amazing in the heat). But the cheap canopies always get destroyed in wind and also doesn’t offer the same privacy as a proper tent?

I want to level up my setup.

If you were going to have to car camp in the middle of a field in intense heat (i.e. music festivals etc.), what is your ideal setup-without breaking the bank? Why?

Is it a rooftop tent? Canopy setup? Proper tent?

Booked a site, weather was clear excluding a 10% chance of light precipitation on our 2nd night. Night 1 was nice, and during the day on day 2 the weather was fantastic. Breakfast, hiking, photography, great food etc. just past dinner, I get an alert on my phone for severe thunderstorms in my area starting in 5 minutes. WTF. It was blue skies and warm.

Well about 10 minutes passed and the sky was dark and thunder was rolling. Started to pack away what we could, get everything secure and covered. Too late. 60 mph winds, hail, and torrential rain hit us. As I was trying to get the rear window of the tent zipped up, a massive tree branch came down and essentially sliced our tarp and tent in half. About 4 inches from my head. Happened so quick it felt like I blinked and my brand new tent was gone. Just bought it a few days ago. Just glad I’m not in the hospital right now tbh.

Needless to say camp trip was over, had to pack everything up in the rain and zoom out. Wife freaked out a bit. Out about $400. Super bummed, trying to stay positive but…easier said than done.

This happened last night, and I’m still feeling sick over it.

My boyfriend and I have been on a road trip through Nova Scotia, and we were spending our final night of the trip at a walk-in site at a provincial park. It wasn’t a super private site and our tent was in clear view to anyone walking by, but it was in a secluded enough area of the campground that we opted to sleep with the fly off.

At around 4:00 AM, I woke up to what sounded like footsteps outside the tent. I was only half awake at this point and thought for sure I had imagined it. A couple minutes later, I woke again when my boyfriend reached out and grabbed my arm. Turns out, he had heard the footsteps too and thought it was me outside. We looked up and sure enough, a man was staring directly into our tent at us. We reacted immediately, loudly asking what the fuck he was doing, and he just walked away.

Obviously neither of us slept the rest of the night. I didn’t think to check my tent zipper until we were actually getting out of bed a couple hours later, and the door on my side of the tent was completely unzipped along the bottom. We notified the campground staff first thing in the morning, but beyond that, I don’t think there’s anything we can do/could have done in the moment to remedy the situation. If anyone has any input on whether we should have done anything differently, I’m all ears.

Not a fun way to spend our last night of vacation. We couldn’t get out of there fast enough this morning and are very glad to be headed back home. Moving forward, I will be locking my zippers with a carabiner and probably won’t be sleeping with the fly off anytime soon. Stay safe out there!!!!!

Home batteries and camping power stations feel weirdly disconnected. Wouldn’t a modular battery that works at home and off-grid make more sense?

I usually use an air mattress but that has its drawbacks

I'm personally team toasted. What's yall's take?