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OT: Camping
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Love these ideas I have an entire notebook page filled now! Misty
I would love to hear about more meal for dinner ideas – chili, hot dogs, burgers, sandwhiches (meat/cheese or PB&J), cereal, garnola bars, instant oatmeal.. keep them coming! I could go for a month with how excited you have all made me feel.
OK but here is the bigger question we have a 12 passanger van. That sounds really big but once we put a tent, screen porch, 9 pairs of shoes, 9 pillows, 9 sleeping bags, 9 school boxes (week days remember to train we will not do without school atleast during nap time).. how do you pack to make the most of the room. I don’t have a trunk? :0(
If you’re not driving for hours (although it’s been done by a fellow homeschooling family on the road for 6 hours), you can have everyone hold their pillows on their laps….sleeping bags & other bedding goes under their feet (a footstool for bigger kids, not even an issue for those whose feet don’t touch the floor)….and we’ve put some things (clothing, towels, etc.) in very strong garbage bags, covered with one of your tarps, and you put it on top of the van if you have a roof rack and use many snug bungee cords.
If you can find a friend who has one of those clamshell things to put on top, they hold a lot. And it’s fun to drive down the interstate looking like you’re carrying a giant Big Mac, LOL!
Hi Misty,
Can you take out one of the benches?
We use tiny camping pillows for the kids. Pack plenty under the benches. Usually the floor under their feet can fit plenty there also – whatever won’t get too damaged. We use Rubbermaid containers in the back behind the seats since they stack well.
I have a recipe somewhere to make your own instant oatmeal, if you can be bothered with that. Pre-mixed bannock in ziplocs is nice to just add water to & bake on a pan – but I think you are gluten free, so maybe that is not useful.
Another idea for packing coolers is to place ingredients for meals in separate bags. All the stuff you need for tinfoil dinner in one grocery bag, breakfast on day 1 in a separate bag. That way you don’t have to dig through several coolers to find each item. Things stay colder that way.
We have each kid pack a backpack (think school-type backpack, not hiking pack). All clothes, activities, flashlights, etc go in there. They hold it in the car or stick it under their feet. This keeps things contained inside the tent AND makes them responsible for their own stuff. Sometimes I’ll pack an entertainment pack with card games, books, school stuff, etc. We use cinch sacks for the sleeping bags so they compact very small. Most of them use their sweatshirts or jackets for pillows instead of bringing their own. If they want to bring an actual pillow, they have to hold it in the car. Lots of stuff can be packed at the feet of baby or toddler seats!
Food: I don’t know how much money you want to spend, but you could invest in some mountain pie makers. We make pizzas or grilled cheese or dessert pies in them.
Walking tacos or taco salad is easy as well.
@jeaninpa – what are walking tacos? And how do you make your taco salad for camping? I’ve seen the mountain pie makers before but have never bought them. I may have to add that to my list of camping stuff to buy.
@houseofchaos – how do you make bannock?
Bannock:
Mix: 3 cups flour, 1tsp salt, 2 tbsp baking powder. Put this in a ziploc.
At campsite, add: 1/4 cup melted butter or oil, and 1 1/2 cups water.
Make ball & knead. Flatten to 3/4 or 1 inch thick. Cook over medium heat in frying pan about 15 minutes per side. If it’s windy, put the lid on for part of the time. Serve hot with butter.
Yum!
Ok so Houseofchaos you just are mixing flour, salt, baking powder, butter and water and eating it like that? Is it to be like a biscuit?
Walking taco’s to us is – you buy the lunch size chips and crush them. Then add your meat, cheese etc and use a fork/spoon to eat it.
Just got back from a week of camping … in our camper. We used to tent camp with 3 kids. Now we have 6. Misty, I know you have 7 so I really admire your bravery here Ha, HA!
On the meals, one of our favorite things to do for that first night is Salad Night. My kids love it and it is so nice b/c you are getting set up and if it is raining, no worries on no fire, you just pull it all out of your cooler and eat.
We usually have some type of pasta salad (which for me is whatever I have on hand from spirals to shells or whatever pasta; I’ll add grape tomatoes, fresh broccoli just barely steamed, artichokes, carrots, olives, etc. like I said whatever you have or whatever you like for the extra veggies in it). Then I make tuna salad, which we all love, and we’ll eat it with crackers, and finally I’ll have spinach leaves with fruit on top and a vinegarrette dressing or just a fruit salad. Easy and done.
Another thing you can do over the campfire is baked beans. Super easy and yummy! We had these last night. Add whatever you like to a can of the baked beans or plain pork beans or whatever beans you like as a base. I usually add brown sugar, ketchup, mustard, barbecue sauce and worcheshire sauce to ours.
We also like to do Foil Meals. This can be really anything you want. Rice, beans, some type of meat, tomatoes, potatoes, etc. People can put whatever they like in the foil and you heat it up over the fire. The rice would need to be pre-cooked. Potatoes need to be cut up small.
I have a crock-pot that uses the same small propane fuel tanks as our coleman lantern. It works really well for soups, beans, etc. I made a Meat Loaf in it this week and I made Grean Beans in my regular crock-pot. Even tent camping, you could take an electric crock-pot if you had a power strip. That was a super easy meal b/c I put potatoes on top of the meat loaf, so we had benas, meat and potatoes all done in two crock-pots (and we enjoyed the lake and beach at the campground all day just checking on it periodically).
As for your van, yes, it will be crowded, but as others have said, using stackable containers is a must. We always did this when tent camping (easy storage for winter too and helps keep brown recluse spiders out which we have plenty of here), and have them take their pillows in their laps and put their blanket inside the case.
Hope you have a lot of fun!
I was thinking. Why don’t you just go shopping when you get there? Just bring a few things like PB&J nuts, raisins, crackers, ect. to tide you over till you get there and set up camp. then, since you have to buy all of this stuff anyway why don’t you just make up a schedule of things to eat. Then buy what you need there. Then you don’t have to pack it.I have found that we waste less when we buy it at the grocery store. You can pack things that you know you want from home like your favorite hot dogs, buns,ect… and get everything else there.
As for packing all of the sleeping bags, pillows ect… Put the sleeping bags under them unrolled across the seats. Then like someone else mentioned they can put the pillows on their laps. We usually pile them up on the window side of the van and the person on the outside gets to lay their head down toward the window while the others lean up against the person next to them to sleep on the trip.
As for walking tacos– Here, they are a small bag of Fritos. You open the bag. Make taco meat and put a scoop in the bag, mix, add some cheese ect… on top. Then the person gets a fork or spoon and eats the stuff out of the frito bag. You can just make the maat up ahead of time and put it in a baggie and let everyone have one of those while you set up camp. 🙂
Yes these are all great ideas. I thought since I didn’t have a camper I would not need electric. But I had thought about the crock pot being a wonderful idea for camping. So if I can get a site with it I have a lot more options! And Time.!
We have been getting things set up around here and just waiting for the right time. Monday or Tuesday to go there .. no one else really around time to train. The food is 2nd to my training. I don’t care and don’t think they would either if we ate PB&J’s with veggies and fruit for every meal. lol
Thanks again this has been a fun thread.
I am not new to camping, but there are so many great ideas here that I’ve never even considered! Thank you! Now I’m in the mood to get on the road!!
We canoe camp all the time. I just wanted to make sure you knew to NEVER put food in your tent. You will get animals in your tent if you do. Where we camp there are bears and other creatures that would love to eat that marshmallow stuck to your sleeping kids face. So keep your food in the car, check every kids pockets before they go in the tent and we always bring wet wipes to clean up them before they go in the tent (wet wipes burn well btw).
Even if you aren’t going where there are big animals.. even mice will chew though a tent to get to crumbs. Wet wipes.. and food in the car is the way to go.
Hi Misty,
I suppose the bannock is like a huge biscuit! You can just cut it up or break off chunks to eat.
I also wanted to give caution about bears – for us camping is always in tents in bear country. I would not leave food cooking in a crockpot all day unattended, and definitely keep the food in the vehicle. It does depend on where you are camping though.
Definitely excellent points on bear country. We don’t obviously camp in bear country very often.
We did camp in Big South Fork Recreational Area once, which has bears, but our biggest threat were the rattlesnakes lying EVERYWHERE. People were being bitten daily. Definitely not a place we’ll visit again in August or September, but beautiful nonetheless.
BTW, raccoons can be quite persistent on the food. Though they don’t pose a significant threat on humans (in comparison to bears), they can certainly ruin your picnic! All of that said, they typically are nocturnal and if you found one ravaging your food in the daytime, it would be safe to assume he/she is rabid.
On the food in the vehicle, I would say still to put it in rubbermaid or other tight-sealing container. Have y’all seen the videos of bears tearing a car apart?!
Misty, you mentioned going to a state park, so the best advice is to follow their advice on how best to manage your food and the storage and keeping of it. They will have warnings and regulations regarding this, especially if in bear country.
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