Camping Equipment Has Come A Long Way
Check out the new camping equipment that's displayed on store shelves in the camping section of your favourite sports store and you'll notice that outdoor gear has come a long way since your childhood days of shivering at night in a damp tent. Today's tents pop up in less than fifteen minutes and have enough headspace for tall people, with room to spare. Most tents today offer portable living quarters with separate rooms for sleeping. Once you're finished admiring the great tents available, take a look at sleeping bags. New materials have enabled manufacturers to pack plenty of heat into a feather-light sleeping bag, and most labels even show you the temperature grading the sleeping gear is designed for.
There are other amenities that can make your camping trip comfortable and even close to luxurious. There's no need to sleep on the cold, hard ground, as plenty of pack-able sleeping pads and mattresses will give you a great night's rest, and for those who still yearn for a comfortable bed, there are portable cots complete with mattresses that can easily fit in a car or SUV. While camping is usually considered roughing it and most facilities that provide tent space require that you walk a distance to share public bathrooms, new developments have made it possible to buy small port-a-potties that even flush just like a regular toilet, which makes those midnight trips to the bathroom a breeze.
The lanterns you'll find on the market have also come a long way from the oil-and-flame relics of decades ago. Rechargeable batteries and halogen bulbs have turned lighting up your camping area easy, and most lanterns have different settings for intense, bright light for the outdoors or softer reading lighting for inside the tent. Other accessories make camping even more pleasurable, including mosquito tents that you can set up over a picnic table for eating in peace, and unbreakable dishes that are nothing like the tin ones our parents used to use. Propane stoves for cooking are now closer to small stoves complete with two to four burners, enough to make a stir fry with chicken, fresh vegetables and a side dish of rice. For coffee cravers, there are drip-style accessories that make having a cup of hot java from fresh grinds easy and quick. If you're starting from scratch, equipping yourself for a camping trip will probably cost between three to five hundred dollars for basic, good-quality equipment. You can always buy just the bare minimum and make do with accessories from your home to start off, and when you have a bit of spare cash, you can add on some items you find you can't do without. For those who have a bit more money to spare, fully kitting out with all the luxuries for an ultra-comfortable camping vacation will probably ring in at about a thousand dollars. Keep in mind that no matter what you buy, camping equipment is a long-term investment and you'll reap the rewards for years to come, which make the initial spending easier to bear.
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