Camping is great hobby for families and college students alike. Get expert tips and advice on backpacking, hiking, and the great outdoors in this video.
Bring appropriate shelter
Choose a flat spot
Bring a sleeping bag and sleeping pad
Bring plenty of food
John Flaherty has a great love for the outdoors. In 2003, John and his wife started Central Coast Outdoors in northern California. His company provides hiking, kayaking, and biking services for those wanting to be closer to nature. John has traveled all around the world through his love of hiking.
JOHN FLAHERTY: Hi, my name is John and today we are going to talk about how to go camping. Pretty basic, very easy, do not let yourself get overwhelmed. You could go camping with a backpack into a remote location or you could drive to a driving camp ground. A lot of times the gear is the same. First let us talk about shelter. A tent, a tent does very well in terms of shelter. Any good sporting good store will have a good selection of tents. This happens to be a rather lightweight tent, good for two people who are going backpacking. What I really like to look for in a tent is one that is going to be self supporting, one that does not need ropes and wires to hold it up. And you could talk to someone at sporting good store and they should know what you are talking about. That way when I setup my tent, I do not have to look for a spot to hammer in pegs to the ground or a tree to tie it off to. I can setup anywhere that I want to that has got a flat spot. Speaking of flat spots, choose a flat spot for your tent. You may think that a slightly uneven spot is going to do it but when you wake up at three in the morning because you are rolling against the side of your tent, you are going to wish you chose a flat spot. So that is very important, site selection with the tent. Then there's some other gear that you typically want to have with you when you are camping. A sleeping bag is a wonderful thing to have. It keeps you warm. Many types of sleeping bags will do fine. If you are car camping, a synthetic bag or even just blankets that you might bring from home. If you are backpacking, I would go for a lightweight down bag like this one. And then you would also going to want a pad, a sleeping pad. This is a nice lightweight backpacking one that inflates, gives you a little bit of cushion on the ground. If you are car camping, shoot, you can bring a larger inflatable mattress or even multiple mattresses to give yourself a little bit of extra comfort. Yeah, when you are camping you are also going to be looking at usually preparing your own food. If you are at a road access camp ground, there might be a nice barbecue pit and you can bring a food to grill over the barbecue. Or if you are backpacking you are probably going to be brining a backpacking stove like this and bringing your own food, which should be very lightweight and of high energy value but lightweight because you are going to be carrying it all yourself. So that is camping in a nutshell. Just covering the basics.
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