There are few activities that offer everything camping offers. Whether you're looking for relaxation after a long work week, trying to find a way to bond with family or just love hunting, hiking, boating and more, it can be the perfect escape--so long as you know what you're doing, that is. You can't have the perfect camping trip without a bit of planning and preparation.
Tents
Getting the right tent is an essential part of planning a good camping trip. If you have four more more people sleeping in your tent, you'll want to buy one of the larger, dome-shaped tents, allowing for more sleeping space. There's nothing worse than realizing at 2 a.m. in a stuffy, overcrowded tent that you didn't get one big enough.
For one or two people, a tunnel-shaped or half-dome tent will suffice. These smaller tents can also be used in addition to your family tent, as a changing room or storage space for clothing and other gear. If you have a large crowd or multiple families, there are multiroom tents, but they usually don't come cheap.
Hot Dogs are No. 1
Part of the joy of camping is cooking in the great outdoors over an open flame. And one of the most popular camping foods is the hot dog. Hot dogs are great for camping because they're so easy to cook--just bring some sort of skewer for holding them over the fire. If you don't have a skewer, you can always grab a stick, sharpen the end and impale your hot dog for roasting.
More Foods
Hot dogs, of course, aren't all you can cook while camping. Virtually anything is doable if you have a portable stove. If you don't, bring a skillet. You can make many different meals over your campfire. There's something perfect about and eggs-and-bacon breakfast cooked over and open flame in the woods, for instance. Bring a pot so that you can make pasta and countless side items like beans and chili. Baked potatoes are another camping staple. Just wrap them in foil and drop them on the grill for about 20 minutes. Speaking of which, bring lots of foil. It's handy for cooking many things, such as meats, corn on the cob and biscuits.
S'mores Reign Supreme
You don't have a freezer in the woods, so ice cream is out of the question for desert. But that hardly matters when you have s'mores, perhaps the most famous of all camping foods. Bring a box of graham crackers, plenty of plain chocolate bars and a bad of marshmallows. Tack two marshmallows onto the end of a stick or skewer and hold them over the fire for roughly a minute, depending on how well-cooked you prefer yours. Combine the melted marshmallow with a chunk of chocolate in between two crackers and just like that, you've got the mother of all camping snacks.
Secure Your Food
You're not the only one who loves it when you go camping--so do the animals that inhabit the area surrounding your tent. In order to avoid having your spot overtaken by critters, lock all food, wrappers and other remnants in your car at night. This is one area where you cannot afford to slack off. Raccoons are prevalent in virtually every wooded area and will eat virtually anything and are very good at sniffing out food. They can be ornery and aren't scared of humans, so if you come across one, don't try to scare it away.
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