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Campus Recreation

How to Plan Your Own Camping Trip

When planning your trip, you'll find it can get overwhelming depending on different components like, how many people, what activties will you be doing, drive time, food, etc. However, once you get started with the basics, the rest easily follows.

The Basics:

Who

  • How many people will be going?
  • How many cars will you have (campsites have limits/charge extra for more than one vehcle per site)?

What 

  1. What activties do you want to do (Hiking, swimming, fishing, biking, hunting, skiing, etc.)
  2. What do you want to do for food?
    1. You can have a meal plan laid out for every day, example: 
      Meal Plan Example
      Meals  |  Days  Friday Saturday Sunday
      Breakfast Muffins and fruit French Toast  bagels & cream cheese
      Lunch On the road Turkey wraps and hummus Salami & Crackers 
      Dinner Chicken, Veggies & rice Spaghetti and meatballs On the road 
       **Depends again on what your goals and activties are for your trip**
  3. What type of equipment (or clothing) will you need? Examples:
    1. Tire Chains for snow
    2. Bring your own water
    3. Fire wood vs. Burn ban
    4. GPS - are you going of the grid
    5. Climbing equipment
    6. Wetsuits
    7. Stoves
    8. 4x4 capabilities required?
  4. REI has a great, comprehensive camping pack list that is also printable so you can check off items as you go.  

When

  1. Do you want to plan a quick get-a-way or do you want to go to a bucket-list location?
  2. Last minute trips will require a little more research and luck as most places require reservations and some spots can be pretty popular.
  3. If you want to go cooler whether or snow camping, you're probably looking for dates between October - April where as warm whether for swimming and boating you'd be searching for dates between Late March - Mid October (best times of the year depend on your location & desired activties)

Where

  1. While national parks are beautiful and iconic places, they can also be pretty crowded. Again, for those more popular destinations you'll have to plan far in advanced most likely or plan for early mornings/late nights to grab first-come-first-serve spots
  2. Check out our resources page on How to Book a Campsite

 A great tool to help get you started is RoadTrippers ! You can type in your start point, destination, and end point and find loads of things to do and see in between!