Car camping, first trip

The week before

• Reserve the site. Read the rules: fires, generators, quiet hours, dogs, food storage.
• Check the forecast and the road. Pavement and a washboard track are different trips.
• Tell someone the site name and the day you will be back.
• Pitch the tent once at home. Find the missing pole in the garage, not at dusk.
• Charge every battery at home, including the headlamp you have not touched since last year.

Sleep

• Tent, footprint, stakes, and something to drive them that is not your boot heel if the ground is hard.
• A bag rated for the night you are actually having. Catalog “comfort” ratings are optimistic.
• A pad. The ground steals more heat than the air does.
• A pillow, or a stuff sack of clothes you were going to bring anyway.
• Earplugs. Campgrounds are not quiet, and the neighbor’s generator is not your problem to solve at 10 p.m. if the rules allow it.

Kitchen

• A cooler, ice, and food for the meals you named. Not a fantasy menu.
• One pot with a lid, one pan, a spoon, a knife, a small board.
• A stove and fuel you have lit at home, plus a lighter in a second pocket.
• Soap, a scrubber, a towel. Wash away from the creek.
• Trash bags. Pack out what the site does not take.
• The food-storage plan the site actually requires: locker, box, or car. Smell stays out of the tent.

Water

Bring the first night’s drinking and cooking water from home even if a spigot is promised. Spigots get shut off. A rough planning habit is about a gallon per person per day for drinking and cooking, more when it is hot. That is a planning habit, not a measurement we took.

• Jugs with lids that do not leak in the trunk.
• A filter only if you might use a creek or lake, and only one you have run at the sink.
• A pot so you can boil if the filter fails.
• Do not drink untreated surface water because it looked clear.

Power

Write the list of things that must run. Phones and a headlamp are a power bank. A 12V fridge is a power station in the 1 kWh class, not the small box. The car’s 12V outlet charges things while you drive. It is not a plan for two days parked with the engine off.

• The bank or station, charged full before you leave.
• Cables you have tested: USB-C, the fridge cable if you have a fridge, nothing still in the wrapper.
• A short extension only if the site listing says there are hookups. Most first-trip sites do not.
• Headlamp on your body, not at the bottom of the bin.

Light, clothing, and a small emergency kit

• Headlamp, plus one spare light that is not your phone.
• A warm layer and a rain layer, even if the afternoon looked kind.
• Sun protection. Sites are brighter than the parking lot you packed in.
• A small first-aid kit, any meds you actually take, and something for blisters.
• The site map saved offline. Signal is a maybe.
• If you will have a fire: a way to put it out. A full water jug counts. “It will burn down” does not.

The car and the site

• Spare tire, and you know whether the jack is actually in the car.
• Walk the pad before you pitch. Flat at noon can be a slope in a sleeping bag.
• Do not idle the engine all night to run a fridge. That is what the power page is for, or leave the fridge at home.
• Arrive with enough daylight to pitch once without the headlamp.

Leave it better

• No soap in the water.
• Fire dead and cold, not “probably out”.
• Trash you brought, including the twist ties.
• The table cleaner than you found it. The next person is also on their first trip.