Everything That Went Wrong on My First Camping Trip, What I Learned and How to Avoid My Mistakes
I grew up camping. From as early as I can remember, my mom would haul my sister and I along on at least a couple weeks of camping each summer. We explored a ton of the parks in Ontario, Canada and fell in love with the outdoors along the way. There were bike rides, cozy mornings wrapped in blankets inside the tent, s’mores and all the amazing images that come to mind with camping.
These were the images I had in mind when booking my first camping trip as an adult years later. I expected with all this experience that the trip would be a breeze.
But boyyyy was I fearfully ill-prepared. You know that saying, I didn’t even know what I didn’t know. Well that was me. I had no idea that I wasn’t preparing as I should until we got there and the mishaps started occurring one after the other.
To sum it all up, I went into the camping trip with the confidence of a camping veteran and left the trip as a cowering rookie. Ok thats a bit dramatic, but the point being, I royally sucked at my first camping trip.
At least I can laugh about it now.
So here you go folks. Want to have a great first camping trip and avoid all the horrible mistakes that I experienced? Read about the numerous disasters that I faced on my first camping trip and the ways you can easily avoid them.
All the Mistakes I Made on My First Camping Trip and How You Can Avoid Them
1. We Forgot SO MANY Things… Including Sleeping Bags
One mistake that is easy for new campers to make is forgetting and/or not knowing to bring certain things. There are some items on camper’s packing lists that aren’t super obvious but can be pretty important for the success and ease of the camping trip.
I can’t use this excuse for all the things we forgot though…
We did not read through any camping packing lists before leaving for the trip. So, when we arrived we realized we had forgot:
- Dish towels for both washing and drying dishes
- A dust pan to sweep out the tent when putting it back away
- Extra towels for general use (wiping up tent leaks, cleaning the tent out as it gets muddy, drying off when you get caught in the rain, etc.)
The other items we forgot that really messed up our ability to bounce back on this trip were freaking blankets and sleeping bags.
This one, I have no good excuse for other than my own stupidity. We based what we would need for sleeping off the hot temperatures we were experiencing in the city. We only brought a thin sheet and 1 single sleeping bag in case it got a bit colder. Which, we later found out did not unzip properly to cover two people.
I don’t even need to give advice on the sleeping bag situation. It should be pretty obvious to bring some blankets to sleep with.
Lesson Learned: Consult Online Camping Packing Lists
To avoid forgetting random items here and there, I highly recommend consulting a camping packing list online and cross-referencing it with any list that you have made.
Many of these packing lists are created by experienced campers who have experience with all the important little details that go into making a camping trip run seamlessly.
2. We Horribly Misjudged Appropriate Camping Attire
Car camping is the time when you don’t have to worry about slightly over packing. Especially when it comes to packing warm clothes. If you don’t end up needing to wear the heavy sweater you brought, then oh well, at least you had it just in case.
For some reason, this was not our mindset and we under-packed.
When camping you need to consider that a) you are often going to need long clothing for around the campsite due to cooler temperatures and mosquitos, b) you should not be sleeping in the same clothing that you cooked in due to animals, and c) that you are going to get dirty, wet or stinky.
Therefore, having several changes of clothing can be pretty important.
We did not pack enough warm clothing to both cook and sleep in. We ended up not having warm clothing in addition to not having proper blankets or sleeping bags. This made for some pretty cold nights. It also rained so much the first day, that the warm clothes we did have to wear around the campsite got wet and we had nothing to change into afterwards.
So this brings me to tip #2.
Lesson Learned: Bring lots of Extra Clothing
Check the nightly lows for the destination you are camping in. If it gets anywhere around or below 15 degrees Celsius, consider packing a ton of warm clothing. In the shade and cover of the forest, it is likely going to feel even cooler than predicted temperatures.
Even if you are camping somewhere that does not get as cold at night, extra clothing is essential for being able to separate clothing you cooked in. It is also important in case it rains.
3. Our Tent Leaked Water
Speaking of rain, this brings me to our third disaster. We were soaked.
Our camping set up did not prepare us for the rain. We ended up scrambling to fix it while it was pouring.
We knew that there was rain in the forecast, but we trusted the rain tarp to do its job. Well, when it pours down rain for hours straight, this almost always does not work out.
As we looked around at all the sites nearby, we saw that everyone else had elaborate tarp set ups that provided coverage for their tents and eating areas. Some even had tarps set up over the fire pit so they could still enjoy the camping vibes that fires provide while rained outside.
All we had was our tent and a measly little eating tent that provided no coverage at all (more on that below).
We did not even have proper rain gear for ourselves. We had to go out and buy rain ponchos. But what do you know, when we tried paying with visa it turned out the rain had caused the machines to be down and we therefore couldn’t actually purchase them. Just our luck haha.
Lesson Learned: Anticipate Rain and Learn How to Set Up
Check the weather forecast in advance. If there is rain, especially heavy rain, then take the proper steps to be prepared. You can do this by:
- Learning how to hang tarps | More on this below.
- Bring lots of rope | You’re going to need a ton of rope for hanging tarps.
- Bring proper rain gear
- Set up before the rain hits if possible
4. We Didn’t Check Our Gear Beforehand
When packing for our trip, I grabbed everything we needed out of my family shed and put it straight in the car. I didn’t think to check any of it to make sure it was in working order before arriving at the campsite.
When we got there, we discovered two things:
- Our tentpoles were warped.
- The eating tent (which we had never actually used before) was basically child sized and provided no actual coverage against the rain.
Turns out, my mom’s dog had collapsed the tent a few weeks earlier and unbeknownst to all of us, had damaged the tent poles. This caused the front door of the tent to be caved in slightly. Which, when it rained, meant all the rain hit directly on the least rain protected area, causing several leaks.
The eating tent was tiny. It was only roughly 6 x 6 feet and we had to duck to get under it. That ruined our plans for hanging out under it while it rained and we ended up having to hang out in the car instead.
Moral of the story…
Lesson Learned: Always Check Your Camping Gear Before Leaving
This especially applies if you have not used the camping gear before yourself, or haven’t in a long time.
5. Our Car Broke Down
This really is not something that could have been avoided with proper preparation… but I had to throw it in there to really paint the picture of how disastrous this trip really was. That’s it. Carry on.
6. We Lacked Essential Knowledge and Skill
This disaster ties into the inadequate rain prep we experienced.
We realized once we got there and were dealing with thunderstorms, that we did not actually know how to rig tarps up over the tents. You could see that so many people were able to get the tarps tied up so high beyond their reach and we simply had no experience or knowledge on how to do this.
Lesson Learned: Practice Some Camping Set Up Before Your Trip
We ended up discovering that the go-to way to hang the tarps was to tie a rock or something heavy to the rope and lob the rope over higher branches. Some groups that didn’t have a ton of trees on their campsite were able to get the rope tied across the entire campsite. They basically hung the rope from high enough in the tree that it could be strung across and down to where they needed it to be.
For this, I would recommend having an experienced camper take you out to practice. This will help you gain experience before even commencing your first trip.
OR you can at least watch a ton of camping tutorials on how to do this so you at least have the knowledge when you arrive.
7. Our Air Mattress Deflated
On top of all the other crazy things that were going wrong on the trip, our air mattress deflated on us in the middle of the first night. We were basically huddled together in our not warm enough clothing, with no proper blankets and then woke up on the floor. Fantastic.
This comes down to checking your gear before you leave. But also, if we had been able to re-pump the air mattress up each night, this would have been more manageable.
Unfortunately we only had an air pump that plugged into our vehicle. So when it was pouring rain outside, we couldn’t actually take the mattress out of the tent to pump it back up. We tried parking the car close enough to the tent, but with the tent pegs and the air pump cord not being long enough, it didn’t work.
Lesson Learned: Consider Packing a Battery Powered or Foot Pump
You can purchase air pumps that are powered by battery or even ones that you use with your foot. Having one of these as a back up would have been super helpful in this situation.
8. We Couldn’t Get a Campfire Started
We had bad luck when it came to starting a campfire as well. The wood that we purchased from the campsite turned out to be wet and had no proper fire starters or kindling to make it work. This brings up two tips that can make or break your camping experience.
Lesson Learned: Purchase Proper Fire Starters
When the fire wood was damp, we did not have proper kindling to get it hot enough to dry out and catch. We had relied on the idea of finding our own kindling around the campsite. But after the rain, all the little sticks we could find were wet themselves. You can purchase wax fire starters that are excellent for starting fires at most campsites. You can also purchase kindling and/or bring a ton of extra paper and cardboard to burn.
Lesson Learned: Bring Back Up Cooking Sources
Do NOT rely on a campfire as your only cooking source. Thankfully, we had brought a cooking stove so we were still able to prepare our meals without a fire. Taking some insight from my sisters first solo camping trip, it is essential to have a backup meal plan in case you can’t get a fire going. She ended up having to go ask nearby campers if she could use their fire to cook on when she was unable to get one started herself
Final Takeaways on My Biggest Camping Mistakes
Now that you have a full idea of just how disastrous this camping trip really was, I do want to say that there were still ways we were able to make the most of the trip and still end up having a good time.
I’m not gonna lie to you, we were super discouraged at some points. We got frustrated, there was crying, and at some points we even cursed out the idea of future camping trips all together. But in the end, we got ourselves together and realized that shit happens.
Shit fricken happens! And we decided that instead of focusing on all the bad stuff, we were going to try to make it work. We took a loss on that night, said a big f*ck you to our campsite, and booked a nearby motel for the night.
Then once we got a good nights rest and the rain stopped, we dealt with the campsite in the morning. The following couple days were amazing and made the whole trip worth it. We got in a ton of hiking, took a canoeing trip to a waterfall, and aggressively suppressed thinking about the previous day until we could laugh it off in hindsight.
All the fiascos were worth it.
We didn’t allow this to taint our image of what our future camping trips could be. We had a camping trip booked for 2 weeks after that and a backcountry trip of all things booked for a month later. So we chose to see this as a “thank god we got the shit kicked out of us before we were alone in the backcountry” kind of trip.
You live and learn guys. And hopefully this post means you won’t have to endure the seemingly endless battles that we faced on your first camping trip.
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Happy Adventuring!
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