The difference? As a kid, you just went camping. There was no preparation. At most, all you had to do is pick what snacks you wanted and what clothes you wanted to bring. But as an adult, the planning and preparation is a whole adventure of its own. What food do I buy? What do I wear? What do I need to bring? I found myself stressing about these things a solid week before the day I was supposed to leave. 

With every adventure comes a set of lessons that you learn from the experience. So here are my lessons from my first adult camping trip!

Buy a tent off Craigslist

We left tent-hunting way too last-minute so it was quite difficult to find something brand new for a decent price. So we decided to look else where and discovered that Craigslist had some barely used tents for really decent prices. Not to mention buying off Craigslist means no tax, and sometimes you can even haggle a little to get a price even lower (which we shamelessly did of course). 

Buy a gas-fueled fire pit

This one is actually completely unnecessary for most people. But for people who are from Vancouver, which I assume you might be, having a gas-fueled fire pit is actually extremely useful.  Anyone that’s lived in BC for a while knows how easy it is for our province to initiate campfire bans due to the large risk of wildfires during the summer. This year has been extremely terrible in terms of widespread wildfires so the campfire ban has been taken even more seriously than usual. Living in a province that has campfire bans every year, having a fire pit makes it so you can still sit around a “campfire” at night and roast marshmallows and sausages. The fire is completely controlled and is easy to start and distinguish. 

Having the fire was also extremely nice at night for extra warmth and light.r Not to mention it gave us something to do! There are even some that come with a cooking grate that converts your fire pit into a partial grill. 

I bought mine from Canadian tire and it was by the brand For Living. The price has since gone back to $140 but a great alternative would be the Outland one from Amazon which is the same price that I paid for the For Living one when it was on-sale. 

Brush up on your safety knowledge

If I wasn’t with my awesome camping partner, I definitely would have made some potentially fatal mistakes on this trip. The biggest one being my (lack of) awareness for the danger of bears. I definitely would not have known to bring bear mace or to put all food items and scraps in the car before heading to bed. I also learned to always set up your fire downwind from the campsite. We had the fire pit for this trip so this wasn’t a huge worry of ours, but it’s still definitely something important to know. 

Buy stew

We pretty much lived off of beef stew and croissants this trip for our main meals. My grocery list for this trip consisted of:

• sausages
• marshmallows
• stew
• croissants
• hot dog buns
• eggs

We ended up having food left over for the week and our groceries only cost us about $40. Given we just ate croissants, eggs, and stew in the morning, hot dogs for lunch, and then more stew and hot dogs for dinner. But everything was actually delicious so I was a happy camper (literally). 

OH and definitely bring a portable stove or grill to cook your food on.

Bring snacks

Since our fire pit made it so easy for us to make roasted marshmallows, we pretty much just ate roasted marshmallows every time we wanted a snack. However I definitely still should’ve brought some chips or cookies or some other sort of snack to munch on throughout the day. 

Don’t forget to buy/bring water

WE FORGOT TO BUY WATER. Thankfully he had several jugs of tap water from his last camping trip that was still in the bed of his truck. And I bought a 6 pack of Gatorade and some iced teas while grocery shopping so we didn’t die of thirst on this trip. But I definitely won’t be making that same mistake again! Boiled river water for instant coffee wasn’t an ideal situation. 

Bring a knife!

I definitely did not think I would need a knife or a hatchet but I was very wrong. Again, thankfully I had a camping partner that knew what he was doing and he had both those things. Whether it’s for cutting food, opening packages, or whatever other reason it may be—it was, without a doubt, extremely useful to have a knife. 

Warmth and comfort is KEY

Although the night-time wasn’t as nearly as chilly as I thought it would be, the wee hours of the morning were still FREEZING to me. So a huge tip I have is definitely to have a WARM sleeping bag. Also, I’ve been told that sleeping naked in your sleeping bag is the best way to create warmth. But I found that when wearing clothes inside my sleeping bag actually kept me warmer. 

As for clothes, I ended up living in my sweatpants and hoodie for the entire weekend with the exception of some sweat shorts for when it got hot in the middle of the day. So here’s my advice as a fashion blogger: don’t worry about having cute outfits. Just bring comfy clothes and you will be happy. 

Set up your camp while it’s still bright out!

We had quite a bit of trouble looking for a camp spot that we were happy with since we decided not to go to a campsite. We didn’t find our spot by the water until it was dark outside so we ended up setting up camp with the help of lanterns and headlights. AND BOY WAS IT DIFFICULT. I 10/10 do not recommend it. Get there early. Set up while it’s bright out. End of story. 

Bring LOTS of TOILET PAPER AND INSECT REPELLENT

And last but not least…

I think this one is pretty self explanatory. 

I hope that I was able to shed some light on camping for those of you who lack the experience, like me. Even though I did get laughed at a few times for my cluelessness, I truly enjoyed my time and would definitely do it again. 

What was your first camping experience like?

Until next time, 

Being someone who has never operated or used an RV/trailer before, this weekend was definitely a huge learning opportunity. So I thought I would share some tips I picked up this weekend from trying to figure out how this “glamping” stuff works!

 1. Find a water fill-up spot/dump site near your destination

We realized very quickly that towing the Airstream with a full tank of fresh water was a struggle and a half. Thankfully we were smart enough at least to go most of our trip with an empty water tank. But the short hour-long drive we endured with the water tank at 60% full felt like a nightmare. With every bump in the road came the fear of something horrible happening as the trailer swayed much more than usual and almost moved the back of our truck with it. 

2. Make sure you know how to operate EVERY part of the RV before you hit the road

I’m not proud to say we actually didn’t know how to operate ANY part of our Airstream before we started our road trip. Thankfully most of it was easy to figure out. The only we couldn’t figure out how to use the entire trip was our plumbing. We had a tank full of water, a working water pump, all the open valves, yet for some reason, we could not for the life of us get our water running to our faucets and toilet. 

I swear we spent probably hours reading material on the internet trying to figure out what was wrong. In the end, we just decided we’ve already wasted enough time trying to figure it out, and went without the plumbing for our weekend trip. 

3. Bring a WARM blanket

Even though it was quite warm during the day, it still really instantly chilly after dark. We didn’t want to leave the generator running overnight in fear that it would bother others’ sleep. I only brought one fleece blanket for the trip so thankfully there was one in the trailer already. 

Ultra important to bring a large blanket as well, especially if you’re planning to share it with someone else. That way there’s much less of a chance of you waking up in the middle of the night freezing, with half the blankets off your body!

4. Make sure you bring ALL the kitchen utensils

We ended up purchasing most of our kitchen utensils and tools at Walmart just because neither of us had extra kitchenware at home to bring. But I highly recommend just bringing whatever kitchenware that you can so that you can save the money! 

We ended up buying a pan, utensils, spatulas, plates, and cups. Although it’s not much, we only had two small meals planned in the Airstream so it wasn’t the biggest deal. 

5.  Open all the windows and then some when you cook!

Especially if you’re going to be making bacon and eggs in the morning ? The smoke from bacon set off our alarm even with all of the windows and doors open. Thankfully the alarm is easily silenced at the touch of a button. But after the second or third time, it does get a little bit annoying. 

I absolutely loved staying in the Airstream, and hope that there will be at least a couple more adventure opportunities in this pretty baby this summer. If you ever get the chance to travel in one of these, take it up! I promise you won’t regret it.

More soon,