Car Camping Essentials You'll Need

PRACTICAL WANDERLUST

Here is the ultimate car camping essentials checklist! Everything you need for hammock camping or tent camping, plus a printable camping checklist.

Car Camping means you load up your car with gear, drive to a campsite, park, and unload your campsite close to your car. This is the most common kind of camping for new campers, and the one we’ll be focusing on in this post!

Tent

If you plan on always rolling up to your campsite in a packed car, weight doesn’t need to be a consideration. But if you plan to carry your campsite on your back, look for ultralight backpacking tents, which are more expensive but much easier to carry.

Cast Iron Skillet

Cast iron is the ideal material for a frying pan because it can quite literally take the heat. It also helps evenly distribute heat, which is important for cooking over open flames since your heat source is spread out.

Safety & First Aid

Make sure you have the necessary supplies on hand to create a fire and keep it going! Also have bear spray, a compass, and first aid kit because you never know when an emergency situation will occur.

HISTORIC AHWAHNEE HOTEL

Two very important things we forgot on our last camping trip: our camp chairs! We left them at home and regretted it the entire time. Here they are in all their cozy glory in a lil' campsite we set up right in our own backyard!

Insect Repellant

Bugs can ruin an otherwise perfectly serene camping trip. But they’re not just a nuisance: if bug bites go unchecked, other things can happen that are far worse than itchy ankles!

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