Any kind–drive-up camping, backpacking, RV camping, in the woods, at the beach, in a shelter, let’s hear it all.
Coffee. If you are a coffee drinker, get a way to make half-decent coffee.
Or tea, or hot chocolate if you hate caffeine. Nothing beats the feeling of a hot cup of something after a short, noisy, miserable night.
Headtorch.
Put on some John Waters movies and load the karaoke machine with lots of Cher and Elton John.
Watch some primitive/bushcraft survival videos on YouTube. There’s a lot of good tips and tricks, especially for when you aren’t exactly prepared for camping (emergency situations) and need shelter, fire, food, water, etc.
Favorite channels:
- Bertram - Craft and Wilderness (off-trail camping videos)
- Coalcracker Bushcraft (lots of good info)
- Donnie Dust’s Paleo Tracks (primitive tools)
- Primitive Technology (fire by friction, primitive crafting)
- Survivorman - Les Stroud (survival, cooking, history, etc)
- Woodsbound Outdoors (good info and demo)
Know where to pitch a tent.
If you are close to a stream, pitch the tent a few meters above the water. If it rains you don’t know how quickly it can rise.
In the same wake, if you are pitching on a plain, pitch your tent on a relative rise. If you pitch in a relative depression rain will drench you.
If you pitch on a slope, and there will usually be slight slopes, pitch your tent so, that your head is facing upwards when sleeping.
If a storm is expected you might be inclined to pitch under a tree, but be careful. If a branch breaks off and hits you, that can be very bad.
If you pitch your tent in the open and it is a hot summer, the inside will get very hot very quickly. Make sure to get up and out early, don’t get wasted at night and bring reflective covering. People died at festivals when they stayed in their tents when getting wasted and then getting roasted in their tents.
I never really see people doing this, but I’ve had a great time pitching my tent in the back of my pickup instead of on the ground. You get a perfectly flat surface and some foam or an air mattress make it pretty comfy.
When cooking with a skillet, let the fire die down, gather as many hot coals as possible and set your skillet firm on top your coal pile.
When cooking with a pot, hang it above a low fire, in most cases you wanna make sure the flames aren’t licking your pot.
This pic is from my last camping trip, if you wanna know how to build the tripod, there are pleanty of youtube videos on the topic.
My friends and I just went camping. Instead of bringing eggs in egg cartons, put them in a Blender Bottle. Shake them up for easy scramble eggs and pour!
What is a blender bottle? but sounds cool
If it’s really rainy protect your fire by having two people hold a plane up.
bring extra food for the first timers. they wont bring enough.
If you’re in bear country, you want to hang your food high from a tree branch. Not right next to the trunk, bears can climb like squirrels. It’s really amazing how fast they can climb a tree.
Also hang toiletries; don’t keep toothpaste or anything scented in the tent with you.
Also for bear country, don’t cook where you sleep
For starting a fire, look for bits of birch bark on the ground, it is extremely flammable and is much better tinder than leaves.
About 2-3 cheap string-lights that run off the 2x AA-battery-packs. Mulitple light angles is better than a single light source. Cheery and festive. Get a multicolored string, if camping with kids or you are a fun camper.
Also OSMand mapping software, configured with offline maps of your camp area. Install the hillshades and height maps for extra detail. Enable and add an overlay-layer of Satellite data. Then scan your camp area and surrounds while online, so that it will cache the satellite map tiles needed when you are off-grid.
Put your shoes in your tent at night so slugs don’t crawl in them. Camping in a national Forest is often free. Take nothing but pictures. Leave nothing but footprints.
In the U.S. of A - in Germany do not camp in the wild if you’re fond of your money. Although we have a milder variant of the Allemannsretten, ours excludes camping in the wild
This depends on the state.
For instance in Brandenburg and Schleswig-Holstein you can camp “in the wild”*
*there is limits in natural preserves, and what is defined as camping can vary. e.g. tarp vs tent, obv. no RVs…
Nope. You can’t.
Brandenburg only has extended and codified the “taking an interruption of your travel” (Rast) into their nature laws - and you must leave after one day. You are only allowed to use it minimally and e.g. make no fire,etc. And even then you need permission from the owner - which the state doesn’t usually grant for their woods/grounds.
In Schleswig Holstein it’s totally forbidden besides the “wild camping spots” - but these are just more “wild” campgrounds, similar to what you find in US national parks. And cost money,btw.
Try not to leave even footprints please. People go trailblazing way too often when there’s perfectly good trails already.
No matter what, don’t go in the winter.
As someone who hates the cold with a passion, there’s nothing worse than waking up cold in the morning because you either didn’t have on enough to keep you warm during a cold winter night in a sleeping bag or had on too much and wake up cold from sweating throughout the night.
Winter campouts are the only camps I absolutely do not miss at all from my time at scouts. The cold mornings are enough for me to not suggest it, despite it not actually being that bad after you’ve warmed up.
Though, on a more serious note, one of the things I do remember being taught but never followed through with for various reasons is to put your clothes for the next day under your sleeping bag so that way the next day they should be warm or at least warmer so you aren’t putting on freezing cold clothes. Especially good for things like jeans because there’s nothing worse than putting on jeans with frigid cold metal buttons if your hands are already trembling a little from the cold winter morning in general.
HARD DISAGREE! I fucking love camping in the winter, as there’s nothing worse than waking up in the middle of the night hot asf.
The whiney southerners unable to take a simple 40° night was my least favorite part of scouting. Clowns crying whilst I curled up in a snowbank. Losers!
Half-Jokes aside, I grew up cold and have a monstrous tolerance, but winter camping is often great, build the fire high, and find your Sisu!
My slightly littler cousin doesn’t appreciate the cold so much, so she also wraps herself in tomorrow’s clothes, good call
