The Camping Store

If you've never camped before, we recommend trying car camping first. You'll have more room to pack essentials, plus such extras as fold-up camp chairs and bicycles. Please note that preparing for a backpacking trip is a fine art. You'll need to carry everything you and your kids need, a process that requires planning, extra expense for specialized equipment, and physical strength.  The items in the checklist below are linked to our products for your convenience.

• Camping Tents: Dome—style tents with fiberglass poles are easy to assemble and reasonably priced.

• Sleeping bags: Nylon mummy bags filled with synthetic fiber are optimal. For small kids, sturdy, washable camp bags are perfectly adequate and far less expensive. Don't buy down bags; they have to be dry—cleaned, and they collapse when wet.

• Air Mattresses for maximum comfort and easy storage.

• Camp stove, fueled with white gas, propane or butane (bring extra fuel).

• Pots, pans, plastic dishes, utensils.

• Bottle and can opener.  (See Multifunction Knives)

• Sharp knife (in custody of parents).

• Water bottles and plenty of water. Purifiers for untreated water.

• One or two coolers.

• Lanterns or candles and matches.

• Flashlights, plus extra batteries.

• Toilet paper.

• First aid kit, sunscreen, insect repellent, medications.

• Backpacks for hiking; child carriers for babies and toddlers.

• Compass or GPS and area map (crucial for wilderness backpackers).

• Plenty of plastic bags for trash, laundry, or keeping things dry.

Beginning campers often start by car camping: not sleeping in the car, as my family once did, but pitching a tent beside it, typically at a site in a private campground or at a state or national park. For your first trip, pick a spot within a few hours of home and plan to stay no more than two or three nights (you want your kids to beg for more, not beg to go home). Call ahead and ask the rangers if they offer family programs and activities, and see if you can reserve a site; many are first-come, first-serve.

Once you arrive at a campground, look for a site that is flat, smooth and on top of a rise (rather than at its base) to prevent your tent from flooding during rainstorms. The ideal site also offers privacy, a mix of sunshine and shade, and a source of water. Our family tries to camp by a river, lake or ocean. In scorching Death Valley, we beat the heat by camping near the area's only swimming pool.

Campground amenities vary widely. These days, resort campgrounds feature water slides, horseback riding and kayaking equipment. For a purer, back-to-nature experience, choose a campground that simply offers the basics: running water, flush—or at least pit—toilets, picnic tables, grills and storage lockers (handy in bear country). Primitive campgrounds—those without running water and with (at best) pit toilets—provide more privacy. If you go the no-frills route, bring plenty of water and lower your standards of personal cleanliness.

Setting up your tent and organizing your site is entertaining when you turn chores into games. Have a contest to see who can gather the most kindling the fastest. Divide your group into two teams and hold a camping cook-off to determine who can prepare the most delectable campsite dinner. And, using those same teams, time which crew can wash the day's dishes the quickest.

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