Beginners Guide to Camping Gear

Disclaimer: when I say beginners, I mean very beginners. My husband and I started with a clean slate, having no camping gear whatsoever we enlisted the help of friends and family to help us purchase our gear as part of our wedding registry, see what I did there? With our love for the National Parks we decided to book a seven night trip to Grand Teton and Yellowstone National Parks.

During our first Parks trip to Yosemite, every morning as we left our cabin we would drive past all the camp sites filled with neat tents and the smell of scrambled eggs. I was envious. I had this itch to camp and I wanted to scratch it! So we decided we would camp four out of the seven nights on our trip to Wyoming.

Both my husband and I are not what you would call avid campers. We may have camped a couple of times as kids but never as adults. So I enlisted the help of my super adventurous brother to help us camp for one night up in the White Mountains in New Hampshire as a test run. It was great, and we learned a ton, like how to set up a tent, how long it will take until your propane runs out, and the fact that we hated sleeping pads! I highly suggest doing a practice run before you actually set out for your first legit camping trip.

Okay so lets have some fun and get into the basics...

Tent - We used a Coleman Sundome 4 person tent. Although this tent is marketed as a four person tent, it was very comfortable with just us two. Perhaps another small child or two would be fine but I am not sure if I would have been comfortable with four adults in this tent. Very easy to put up and take down. Great ventilation and the rain fly keeps you nice and dry. Plus if you leave the rain fly off, you can gaze up at the stars all night. It fit our queen size blow up mattress great, with a small space on the side to keep our stuff. For the most part, when you are camping with a car on site, you will be keeping most of your items in your car as any items with scents (lotions, soaps, dirty dishes, food items) can attract bears. When taken down, this tent will be too large to pack into a backpack so keep that in mind, and also a suitcase; when we flew to Utah we had to carry this like a carry on. Weighs approx. 10lbs and folds into a neat 24"x6"x6" rectangular bag. What we wish we brought: a tent dust pan.

Floor tarp - Not absolutely necessary but we were really glad we had one of these. We placed our floor tarp on the ground first, then put up our tent on top, leaving about 2' poking out the front to act as our "entry way", and where we put our shoes. The tarp also gets the grunt of moisture, dirt, and leaves so that it does not get all over the bottom of your tent. You can also use this tarp at the beach or to cover up a dirty looking picnic table before you eat on it!

Sleeping Bags - These were the sleeping bags we used, which we were so glad we did because it got down to 35F in Yellowstone at night! If you are going to be camping where it is cold make sure you get sleeping bags that can keep you warm down to the degrees you need. These were very lightweight, approx. 3lbs each. For me personally, I did not completely enjoy the "mummy" style of these sleeping bags since I normally sprawl out when I sleep. Once these get older, our next sleeping bags will probably be the rectangular shape. I ended up zippering open mine all the way, just slipping my feet in the bottom, and using a blanket on top to sleep.

Camping Pillows - Pretty basic but if your forget them it kinda sucks. We used these camping pillows pictured above. Super soft and they fold up to fit in the palm of your hand. These even came in handy on our red eye back home! If you need additional pillow support while you sleep, use an extra sweatshirt you brought instead of purchasing two pillows per person.

Air Mattress and Pump/ Sleeping Pads - Another reason why a test run is so important is to see how you sleep. During our test run we used the sleeping pads pictured below, and I slept terribly. They just did not give me enough cushion and I felt like I was sleeping straight on the ground all night. Plus, with the mummy shape, I was constantly off the pad. For our big camping trip we brought our handy new queen air mattress. This was a gem, and I slept great all vacation! Don't forget to pack the battery operated quick pump! Blows up super fast and folds up pretty compact, we fit this in our suitcase, like a boss.

Flashlights/ headlamps/ lanterns - We used these lanterns left over from our wedding and they were just okay. They do not disperse light well, so in certain situations like when you want to shine light on something specific like say a trail, its hard. I would suggest getting a headlamp so you can still clean up and cook with ease if it is dark out (plus look like an absolute bad ass). Also, headlamps will pack much easier in your bag as they take up less space than a lantern!

Backpacks - On our camping test run we used larger internal frame backpacks, which for our circumstances, were just okay. While hiking Mt. Lafayette we realized this pack is a bitch to hike with unless you absolutely need to. I think these ones are made for more backpacking experiences and not so much for what we were accomplishing. If you are going to try back country camping for your first camping experience, then by all means, this backpack would work for you! But since we were living out of our car we only needed small backpacks to hike the day with. Mike used a basic North Face backpack and I used a small Camelbak which I absolutely adore. It holds 80oz of water and you can funnel it straight into your mouth! But if hiking with a lunch, someones bag has to be large enough to carry food! 

Camp Stove - Now lets talk about food, my favorite subject. We used this bottle top propane stove by Coleman. The main reasons why we went with this model is 1) the cooking surface is large enough for most standard pans up to 10" and 2) the propane for these models is pretty universal and you can find it just about anywhere. This model does take up more space and your conventional camp stove (aka like a MSR PocketRocket) but with the amount of cooking we do this was the model for us. It comes apart so you can pack it however you like, we just kept ours in its original box. Don't forget to actually purchase the propane. If flying to your destination, do this once you land!

Pot/ Pan - As you can see in the images above, we brought pots and pans straight from our own kitchen. We cook a lot so we knew we would utilize standard size kitchen wear just fine. We used the 2qt sauce pan to boil water and the fry pan to make all our one pot meals, fry eggs, saute veggies, etc. If you wanted to save space and weight you can invest in some nifty camping cookware like this. We brought along a few dehydrated meals from Good To-Go which were absolutely delicious! Since we had cold food storage in our cooler, we added in proteins like sausage and ground beef plus vegetables like spinach or kale.

Silverware/ Cooking Utensils - We brought in total two stainless steel sporks, a stainless steel camping spatula, and a pocket knife. And that folks is really all you need. Make sure to bring enough sporks for how big your party is. These sporks were great because if you look closely, you can see one side of the fork part is a dull knife!

Plates/ Bowls - There are a lot of nifty camping plates and bowls out there but we went really basic. I did not want to have a lot of waste so we decided not to go paper. But I also just wanted something cheap so we bought two plastic plates and two enamelware bowls. These stood up like a boss the whole trip, just remember if you bring re-usable gear you have to bring cleaning supplies (a simple sponge and dish soap). Also, most of the camp sites we camped at did not have a designated dish cleaning area. In fact, most of them prohibited dish washing in the bathroom sinks or water basins. What they did allow though is for you to dump your cleaning water into a basin, so do bring a shallow plastic container that you can use as a wash basin to clean your dirty dishes.

Cups/ Yetis - We love Yetis. We brought two, one for each and they acted like our own sippy cups all vacation! Hot coffee in the morning, heck yea.. cold beer at night, hell yea! I like the size of the Rambler Lowball 10oz. Keep in mind, the lid it comes with has a sip opening that does not close, so we purchased the MagSlider lids to be able to completely seal the lids.

Hatchet - So glad we brought a hatchet. Mike purchased this one and was very happy with it. We used a hatchet to hammer down the tent stakes and chop wood. You are going to need something to hammer down the tent stakes so might as well invest in something multipurpose.

I hope this helped you feel more confident in your upcoming camping trip! I would love to hear how it goes so leave a comment or contact me via my email healthyafay@gmail.com. Below is a master packing list with everything I could think of besides personal care products, clothes, and firewood. Happy Camping! Amanda