CamperBug.com

Let’s Go Camping! Helpful Hints…

We love Camping! Bringing the family together outdoors creates memories to last a lifetime. This blog is our way of sharing some of the beautiful places we have camped, along with some of our most treasured, and not-so-treasured, experiences.  We hope our camping adventures can open new directions and  possibilities for you and your family, and that you will share your own adventures with everyone on our site.  Campers, after all,  are members of a special brotherhood.

Tent Camping Hints:

We started off as tent campers. We have many wonderful, and well, challenging, experiences to share.  Tent camping takes you back to the basics; it gets you in touch with nature.  Nature gifts us with sunshine, spring days, cool nights, and the sounds of crickets and frogs as you lay in your sleeping bag.  Nature brings unexpected thunderstorms, along with hotter-than-planned days, and colder-than-anticipated nights.  Nature’s gifts can include an eagle that soars high above your campsite, or raccoons that raid your food, as well as a surprise meeting with a pair of unidentified yellow eyes on your way to the bathhouse during the night.

Survival Hints for Tent Camping:

1. Waterproof everything.  Waterproof everything.  Waterproof everything.  Do you get my point?

• Purchased liquid waterproofing material is available for applying to the seams that hold your tent together.  This needs to be reapplied occasionally.
• Keep your clothes in an Igloo or other insulated container.  You will quickly find that humidity will make every wearable item you brought feel like it is is still on the damp cycle of your dryer.  The Igloo will keep the humidity out and your clothes relatively dry,  and it gives you something to sit on in your tent.
• Keep all of your chips, cookies, bread, etc. in an insulated cooler, as well, so they won’t get soft.  No ice, please!
• Don’t forget to waterproof the top of the screen tent canopy you bring to put over your food table.
• Make sure you use a moisture barrier, such as a plastic sheet, UNDER your tent when you set it up, and have another to place OVER your tent, in case of rain.

2. Plan ahead to keep ALL food tightly locked away – even when you are not at your campsite during the day.  Hungry critters do not wear watches!  They will share in your edible goods 24/7.

3.  Bring a small broom with you, and get some sort of entry rug.  It is a challenge to keep the inside of a tent clean.

4.  Bring ear plugs.  While you may be planning to listen to the sounds of nature,  you may end up in a campground with Non-tenters, aka RVers, whose AC units hum throughout the night.

5. Always bring extra blankets and towels.  Figure out how many you think you’ll need, and double it.

6. Come well-stocked with insect defense: repellent for mosquitoes, spray for wasps and hornets, and powder or granules for ants in the ground.  Spray the legs of your picnic table with ant or bug spray that has a residual effect.

7.  Come prepared with extra bungee cords and small ropes;  somehow, you always need them.

Do you have any special helpful hints for tent campers?  Share them with everyone!

Hints for RVers:

Plan ahead.  The world of RV camping has gone to reservations.  The idea of stopping for the night in a Wal-Mart parking lot or in an over-night rest area may be plainly unsafe or illegal. Reserve America is in use in most places.  To find a federal camping spot, check out recreation.gov. But have a reservation.  A reservation guide, such as Woodall’s,  is a real safety net.

Don’t leave home without the current version of the Next Exit by Mark Watson. No, I don’t know Mark Watson; further, I have nothing to do with his book.  I just know it is an invaluable tool for knowing where you can find gas/diesel, and where your RV or Fifth Wheel rig can fit in the gas station!  You can buy this book online at Amazon.com, and probably at Camping World or Barnes and Noble.  It is updated every year, and cheap.  Ours is dog-eared.

Survival Hints for RVers:

1. Check out your equipment BEFORE hitting the road.

• Check the propane in your tanks.
• Make sure your refrigerator is working; turn it on at least a day before you plan to leave.
• TIRES    TIRES TIRES If you have ever had a flat tire or a blowout on your RV or Fifth Wheel while travelling 65+ mph down an interstate, you know why this is so important.  Check you tire pressure.  Check your tires for signs of wear.  If any of your tires look even questionable, REPLACE THEM!  You can scrimp and save in some other area – but don’t take a chance on tires! We speak from experience, and not a pretty one.  MAKE SURE YOU HAVE A GOOD, SPARE TIRE!!!!!!!!!!!!
• This is a good time to remind you to have RV insurance and Road Service, such as that provided by Good Sam’s.  It is cheap, and worth every penny.
• Attachments – If you have bicycles, ice chests, swim toys, or other small items tied or attached to the outside of your RV,  make extra sure they are secure.  One of these items coming loose on the interstate and flying into another vehicle is the LAST thing you want to add as a vacation memory.
• If you have a Fifth Wheel, make sure the tow hitch of the trailer is securely clicked in place before pulling out.   Speaking from another unpleasant experience, if it is not, the trailer will slip loose and land on the sides of your truck bed.    Not a pretty sight!  We’ll write about it and show you a photo later……..

2. Take extra plastic storage containers of all sizes.  These are stackable, and you never know when you will need one for something, whether it is leftovers, or a small turtle that needs a home to ride back in.

3.  Take a collapsible clothes hamper for dirty clothes.  It stores flat, is usually made from breathable mesh for moisture issues, and is easy to take inside straight to the laundry room when you return home.

4.  Use non-skid cabinet liner in all of your cabinets and drawers.  This really helps to keep things from sliding around so much while you’re on the go.

5.  Place child-proof cabinet locks, aka “kiddie locks,” on any cabinet door that might jar open while you’re travelling.  After arriving at a destination with most of our mug collection in pieces on the floor, we discovered this solution.

6.  After setting up your campsite, sprinkle ant poison around the area where your tires touch the ground.  This really helps avoid unwanted visitors in the pantry.  Use caution here if you have a little pet with you!

7.  Have a toolbox filled with basic tools that never leaves your RV.

Please share any helpful ideas related to RVing you have learned along your RV journey!

As any seasoned camper knows, half the time you spend in a campground is with other campers talking about camping!  We hope you will use this site to share your helps, hints, travel suggestions/pitfalls, or campfire stories with everyone.  Here are some topics everyone will be interested in:

• Camping with children/grandchildren
• Camping with pets
• Very cool places to camp
• RV maintenance hints and helps
• New camping products you have found
• easy, efficient food prep/recipe ideas for camping
• new or unusual places to camp
• how to live long-term in an RV

Campers are a sharing lot.  Let us hear from you!

First Time Out

Do you remember your first time with new camping equipment? Whether it was a tent, an RV, or a coach, the first time at anything can leave you with a tale to tell!

For many years, we camped with a tent.  While our tent was a Cadillac of a tent, with the children grown and us looking for more luxurious accommodations, we bought our first RV .  It was a 30 foot bumper pull, a CrossRoads by brand.  It was bought, almost on a whim.  We went to an RV/Outdoor show, thinking we would move up from a tent to a Pop-Up, then saw a really small bumper-pull, then this 30 foot trailer with a queen-size bed for MiMi and PaPa, and bunks for the grandkids.  It happened just that fast. ( Have you been there???)

It was a Friday afternoon in February, with a cold weekend forecast.  We had bought the trailer earlier in the week , and it was ready for us to pick up.  After receiving a brief instructional session from our sales person, we hooked her up and were off!

We showed up at Fountinebleau State Park near Mandeville, Louisiana near sunset, and we had no reservation.  Figuring out that we were totally green at RV camping, the park ranger assigned us to a pull-through site.  Good thing there!  We had come prepared that day with 2 pillows and sheets for the bed.  That was it.

After parking our new trailer in the pull-through site, and spending the rest of the weekend in a trailer that seriously needed leveling, we locked her up and headed into the nearest town for food and a few other supplies.  We got back to the campground well after dark, around 9:30 pm.  The temperature had dropped to around 30 degrees, with a forecast low in the 20’s. To our surprise, our new trailer keys had apparently fallen out of a pocket somewhere in a Home Depot parking lot in the nearby town.

A park ranger would be there until 10 pm, and suggested we call Pop-A-Lock.  He also suggested that, it was his understanding, that many of the keys that accessed the storage compartments for many brands of trailers were generic.  (Did you know that?) If we could find someone in the campground with a trailer similar to ours, their key might open our new palace on wheels.

After knocking on a lot of trailer doors of perfect strangers in the campground, we found someone who had a key he was willing to loan us at the late hour.  The ranger was right!  The key fit a storage compartment on our trailer, that happened to lead into the inside living area, if you lifted up the wood base for a mattress in the bunk area, and crawled up through the small space. I know you can picture it!

Lesson learned:  Keep a spare key to your trailer in your tow vehicle, and a spare key to your tow vehicle in your trailer.  You can’t really function without either.