Bring your bestie! My bestie and I have been pals since 2007 but we found a new level of friendship when we started camping together. You learn to trust one another in new ways, depend on each other in constructive ways, and take care of each other in case of an emergency. Plus all that time in the office on G Chat comparing gear and making a plan is a great use of paid time!

I, like so many people, have a high pressure job staring at a computer most of every day while working with medical organizations and institutions such as themedicaloncologygroup.com so time spent away from the office, in the wilderness, worrying about things like safe drinking water and procuring firewood is a great brain reset from the mundane day-to-day-ness of living life in a major metropolitan area. It’s hard to worry about things like how many likes I’m getting on Instagram when I’m trying to figure out which way north is to make my way back to my camp site!

Test out all of your gear before you take it on a backcountry camping trip. Make sure it works how you expect it to, you know how to use it, and get yourself used to its place in your pack. Just like you keep things in your home in places you expect to find them, you should treat your trekking backpack the same. You don’t want to spend an hour looking for your toilet paper in a dire situation! Pitch your tent in your apartment – time yourself. Use your compass to orient yourself around your neighborhood. Use your multi-use tool for small jobs around the house or invent jobs to try it out. Make sure the batteries in your headlamp, flashlight, speaker, etc is charged and will last your entire trip. Break in your hiking boots. Cook on your campstove at the house one night, it’ll be adorable! Just be sure that you are familiar with all your gear, it has a place to live, and it won’t shit out on you in the woods!

Make a plan, on paper, and a map, on paper. I know – you’re used to relying on your smart phone for maps and plans, but your smart phone is mostly useless in backcountry camping and you’ll likely end up just wasting a bunch of time trying to keep it charged. I bring mine with me to use as a clock and a camera, and I usually save some screenshots of my plans and maps to have as a backup. But I like to bring printed, laminated maps and plans to have with me. Don’t change your plans halfway through your trip – respect the amount of time you put into planning and organizing – trust your past-self!

We’ve covered Southwest Michigan, which is a great option for new campers looking to get out of whichever city (Detroit, Chicago, Gary, etc) they are living in. Easy access to hiking, swimming and towns make Southwest Michigan really lovely and relaxing! If you’re looking for more of an intense trip that requires skills and planning but still has the comfort of local weekend camping, national parks are a great option!

National Parks offer more in the way of backcountry camping, which is a cute way of letting you know that you won’t be dealing with RVs, campgrounds, bathrooms and a lot attendant making sure you GTFO of your site at checkout time. Camping in a national park requires lots more planning, mapping, and gear because you’ll most likely be Out There on  your own dealing with the elements without the benefit of a cooler or smart phone or nearby vehicle.

In the next few posts, I’m going to get into the logistics of backcountry (or dispersed) camping in national parks to help you get yourself mentally, physically, and literally geared up for a trek into the wilderness!

Some of the smaller odds and ends I try to pack in my gear that make camping easier or more comfortable:

1. There are lots of little bracelets that function as a compass for orienteering, have a whistle for emergencies, a flint for fire-starting and are on a hemp cord for security. These are cheap, light, easy to carry, and super helpful if you know the general direction you are trying to go.
2. A small axe or saw are super helpful for sites that don’t provide firewood or when you need kindling. It’s also super helpful if you have rowdy neighbors and need some self-protection confidence.
3. A small lantern of some sort is good to have at night. I have a collapsible plastic one that charges in the sun all day long and then shines for up to 8 hours. These are pretty inexpensive, ubiquitous, light, easy to carry and endlessly helpful while you’re trying to get your site ready for the night time.
4. Oral rehydration salts/tabs are super helpful if you go on a long trek and run out of water. Dehydration is really uncomfortable and can ruin your entire day, so make sure you’re hydrating appropriately and if procuring water is a challenge, oral rehydration salts may help!
5. Remember to bring garbage bags, towels, utensils, and any other necessities. You’ll learn each trip what you need to add to your pack, don’t worry if you forget stuff each time. It’s a learning opportunity!

Camping and trekking is pretty activity-free considering the act of trekking, setting up camp, preparing food and drinks, and settling in all take much more time than they do in real life. That’s part of the appeal – the things that we take for granted in our everyday lives are suddenly much more challenging and therefore rewarding. Sure, you can find a billion “camp hacks” online, but the point of camping is to eliminate the hacks and get back to the action of things.

To that effect, I’m struggling with the idea of this trekking app because – besides when it is needed for survival – part of the fun is navigating and orienteering. Though I have approached an iOS app developer. In my next post, Odds and Ends, I’ll walk you through some of the small pieces of gear that will help you enjoy your camping and trekking. One or two of them are designed to help you orienteer. It’s also fun to test your brain with different trail signage, lack thereof, and using things like THE SUN and MOSS GROWTH to dictate your path rather than an app that simply tells you to “head left” or “turn right.”  I use Google Maps pretty much every time I go somewhere new in the city, and while it’s super helpful in getting me places on time, it certainly hasn’t helped me learn to get myself around very well.

I love being in the woods and using the sky to help me determine my path. I love being lost but not knowing it yet and then making time calculations to ensure I’m not out lost at night. This is where I think the app could come in handy – if I’m out and it’s getting dark and I’m not sure how to get back to my site, part of me goes into panic mode. I likely wouldn’t use the app/map function for the entirety of a trek, but if I get nervous it certainly is a nice security blanket.

I like to bring music and a speaker for part of the trek and to listen at breakfast, but I do love nature sounds themselves too. I like to bring some games to play at the site whether it be cards or an elaborate board game. Some of my friends like to bring a slack line and spend the day walking between trees, but since I sleep between trees this is partly lost on me.

4. Drinking: drinking while camping is part of the fun, but drinking accumulates SO MUCH WASTE. I got really sick carrying garbage bags of empty, leaky beer cans to garbage posts and having my trunk carpet smell like warm beer for weeks. There are a few stand-by cocktails that have come to work well. Tequila Mules are delicious, refreshing, and pretty easy to transport. You just need a bottle of tequila, some ginger beers, and a few limes. You can even keep the tequila in the freezer so that it helps cool your cooler and you don’t need ice. For cooler nights around the campfire, spiced rum and cider makes a lovely boozy treat. Just pour two parts cider one part spiced rum into your tea/coffee kettle and set it on the fire until it’s reached your desired temperature. Drinking water is also obviously of great importance – this is where the frozen water bottles come into play. By the time you run out of your Nalgene water or whatever, these will have thawed into drinkable water and your food will no longer require refrigeration. It’s basically magical

5. Non-car camping: Now if you’re trek-in camping, meaning you’re parking somewhere and hiking miles and miles to a dispersed campsite. This will greatly change your gear situation as you can only bring in what you can carry (and feasibly get out). This eliminates the cooler altogether meaning lots more dry foods. It also severely limits the amount of water you can bring in. I usually try to bring a small water purifier and procure stream water. Not everybody (nor their bowels) are down with this plan, so maybe give it a try at a drive-in camping trip before depending entirely on it.

6. Bathrooms: Drive-in camping sites almost always have a public bathroom situation whether it be showers and flush toilets or a squat latrine with some walls around it. Do some research before heading out to know which you’ll have and plan accordingly. If the former, you won’t need to bring much besides your favorite shower products and a small towel. If the latter, I try to bring some things to eliminate the need to shower: a handkerchief to tie up my hair during the day, some face wipes that can also be used to bathe body parts of interest, and some baby powder to keep your hair and body fresh. If this is your camp style, I advise putting nothing besides sunscreen and bug spray (only if very necessary) on your skin because it just gives more for dirt and dust to stick to. And please, no make-up, it’s silly and you know it. It’s silly in your everyday life, but it’s especially silly out in the darn wilderness!

What kind of gear you need to bring on a camping/hiking trip depends greatly on many factors so allow me to outline my process and accompanying gear before we get into some of the determining factors. The app in the works would ideally geoposition your campsite, the weather and your transport plans to help you develop a packing list.

1. Sleeping: sleeping is the best part of camping because you’re pretty much outside and you probably spent all day exerting yourself so sleep comes easily to an orchestra of forest noises (or children/drunk adults if you so unfortunately find yourself at an RV park). I bring a hammock tent which I pitch about three feet off the ground using tension straps between two trees. My hammock tent has a mosquito net and a rainfly, so it’s three-season friendly and I keep a sleeping bag inside of it for cooler nights. I also clip a solar-powered lamp inside of it for nighttime reading. It takes about five minutes to set up, ten minutes to take down and pack away, and it weighs about three pounds and fits into one of the outer pockets of my trekking pack.
2. Carrying: carrying your things to your site can be a real challenge unless you’re drive-in camping, which is actually my favorite. It still paints the picture of rustic camping without all the blisters and backpack strap rub wounds. However, I do have a trekking pack that can carry all of my necessities should I need it. It’s a North Face 65 liter pack and I can pretty much use it for up to 5 days of trekking and camping if I’m packing very strategically. For now though, with drive-in camping, I mostly just need it to carry my things from my apartment to my car and from my car to the site touchdown space. I’m a big fan of compartmentalizing within a large pack, especially for longer treks, so I have lots of packing cubes and kits and containers. Nothing’s worse than your body wash and shampoo bottles cracking open and opening your bag to a slimy mess. You want all liquids in sealed containers inside of sealed packages inside of your pack.
3. Eating: eating can be a challenge in hiking/camping situations if you’re not driving in. Since I drive in, it’s pretty straightforward. A few days before the trip, I put a ton of 2/3 full water bottles in my freezer to use in my cooler. I usually take some breakfast items (fruit, yogurt, granola) and some sandwich wraps and granola bars for trekking lunch, and then foil packs for dinner. This is usually just vegetables, chicken, and spices in foil to roast over the fire. Another excellent option is to go to your local “ethnic” grocery store and buy some corn husk wrapped tamales, freeze them, and throw them in your cooler. By the time you’re ready to cook them, they’ll the thawed and because their packaging is corn husk, there’s no waste. The more you camp/trek, the better you get at minimizing waste.

Southwest Michigan has so many benefits: 1. It’s close to Lake Michigan, 2. It’s close to the sand dunes, 3. It’s easy to get to from Chicago, and 4. It’s very well-travelled so it has well-marked trails and amenities. There are of course some drawbacks, the major ones being that 1. It is well-travelled, so if you’re looking for an escape from humanity, this is not the place, 2. Most of the campsites are state park run which means they’re close together and overrun by recreational vehicles, and 3. There are lots and lots of hokey tourist traps in the surrounding areas whether these be go-kart tracks, orchards, or vineyards making undrinkable blueberry wines.

I tend to like a long trail, I want to be out for several hours at a time, but for beginners or people with limited time, Mount Baldhead may be a perfect mini-getaway. It’s just under two miles and starts in the dreamy little resort town of Saugatuck, MI. This hike includes a hand-pulled chair ferry and sweeping views from the top of the forested sand dunes.  The descent on the west side ends at Oval Beach for lounging, swimming, and occasionally surfing. This hike is short but includes almost 300 steps, so leave Grandma in the car. Although, all along the steps are little benches to rest, take pictures, drink a beer, or catch your breath. I like to pack a lunch and spend a few hours on this journey.

A little further north you may find the Love Creek County Park & Nature Center in Berrien Springs. I love this nature center and its 100 acres of meadows, marshes, forests and natural waters. Birds and wildflowers paint a watercolor image across the area and you may see some exotic wildlife from time to time. Wait, is a deer “exotic?” This is one of my favorite winter hikes as there are several wooden bridges and an observation tower. I just love bundling up and going out exploring the five miles of interconnected trails. The signage isn’t great, especially in winter when the park shares its trails with some cross country skiers, but with only 5 miles of trails you can never get too lost. This park is managed as a preservation and education area and includes classrooms etc in case you’re looking for a spot for a very cool field trip! Oh and they let you bring your dogs!