What to Do While Camping

“Even in a time of elephantine vanity and greed, one never has to look far to see the campfires of gentle people.”

Garrison Keillor

If you are staying at a campground, there are normally lots of different activities to fill your day. Whether it is sightseeing, photography, exploring the wilderness or playing games you can normally find something to do without getting bored. However, when the sun goes down, it is not so easy to fill in your time with activities, so the following section is all about activities to do when it’s dark.

The Classic Campfire

There is nothing more fun during a camping trip than sitting around a campfire with family and friends at night under the bright shining stars and toasting marshmallows or smores. Building a campfire is a quite easy, but it’s vital you do so responsibly so as not to damage the natural environment or endanger other people.

Location

It is especially important to find an area that is suitable for building a campfire. If you are camping in the great outdoors, it can be a bit more difficult to find a suitable place as opposed to an actual campsite. It’s imperative to follow all the rules as laid out by park rangers and to pick a site which is not too close to the forested area, particularly bushes that could easily be ignited, and also not too close to a rocky area. It’s also necessary to make use of a fire ring if provided but in the case that it isn’t, stones will do the trick to help contain ash.

Firewood

When you’ve chosen the ideal spot for your campfire, the next important thing to think about is gathering firewood. You can gather firewood from your natural surroundings, and it’s ideal to collect twigs and branches such as tinder, as well as kindling to get the fire started easy. If wood is not readily available in the area where you are camping, it’s recommended that you bring firewood with you.

Lighting the campfire

Although building a campfire requires the builder to have a little bit of experience, the whole process is relatively easy. A fire will naturally burn properly with the aid of several pieces of wood along with air, and fuel. The first thing needed is tinder which can be twigs, leaves, paper, wood shavings or pine needles. Followed by that is kindling which is mainly smaller sticks and then ultimately firewood which is larger wood to help maintain the fire.

To construct the fire, simply lay the kindling over the tinder in a criss-cross pattern while ensuring that you don’t build too many layers as fire requires air to burn. There should be a small amount of room at the very bottom (the base) to light the tinder. Once lit, simply adding firewood will help keep the fire burning.

Safety is vital, so it’s wise to not leave the fire unattended to, or allow inexperienced people or young children to maintain it. Fire should be handled responsibly which means only those who are experienced in creating and maintaining fire should supervise it.

Putting Your Fire Out

Making sure a fire is properly extinguished is extremely crucial. Firstly use water to snuff out the hot kindling and cover it with dirt/earth if need be. Carelessness could lead to spreading wildfires so make sure you put out your fire completely.