With the camping season approaching us, many families will take to the backwoods to go camping. If you yourself have never truly camped in a tent before, you are missing out on the greatest form of camping. Taking a tent with all the goodies to the backwoods is an experience like none other.
However, it is not something that you just up and do one day without getting a few basics. Where to place your tent is very important on your camping expedition. There are so many magazine picture of the perfect campsite that are misleading. A perfectly built fire with the opening of the tent facing the fire which is only a few footsteps away. Sorry, but that is not advisable in the backwoods with real animals and real natural elements such as smoke.
To give you a good idea of where to pitch your tent when camping, I'll tell you about a camping trip that we went on in the backwoods.
We were in the backwoods, not a forested commercial campground. The trail had designated campsites to help with the overall impact of the area. Ours was located in a bend along a small river and came complete with a campfire area with log benches. There was also a 'high hide' for us to string up the food at night. No picnic table, no barbecue grill, no faucet with clean water and no outhouse. It was pure backwoods camping and we were planning on staying four days and three nights.
This type of campsite allows you to choose where you place your tent. We did have some guidelines from a Park Ranger, that we met with before departing, on how to choose our tent site.We chose our tent site based on the pointer outlined by the Ranger. First we didn't want to be too close to the water. Low lying areas near streams and creeks are susceptible to flooding if Mother Nature dishes out a heavy rain storm. Up in the mountains, what looks like a moderate rain storm can compound quickly if the run-off gathers in the stream.
Next we checked the area for dead trees. We certainly didn't want a big gust of wind knocking a tree down on us. We made sure that our tent was not in range of any dead trees. Our fire and food prep area needed to be far enough away from our tent to keep us safe from animals looking for lunch. If a bear smells your campsite, you certainly don't want him rummaging through your tent, too. We kept all food items with strong orders, dangling fifteen feet above the ground. However, we made sure that our tent was a good thirty yards away from that.
The last factor in the decision of where to place our tent was the outhouse. In the backwoods, there aren't any outhouses. You are truly roughing it when you have to find a suitable place to 'take care of business'. But you want privacy at the same time. We didn't want our 'outhouse area' to be too close to our tent and certainly not upwind.
So with all those factors in mind, we came up with a space that was situated out in a meadow, away from the standing dead trees, water, fire, food, and outhouse. Our next task was finding the smoothest, most level ground to setup our tent on. Once we found a good spot, we positioned our tent door away from the main wind direction. We were already far enough away from the fire that smoke would not be an issue for us. The ground would provide adequate drainage in the event of a rain water overflow so we didn't need to dig a trench around our tent.
Our camping trip was awesome and we had a great time. My advice to all of you that want to venture out into the backwoods this summer is plan ahead, follow the advice of the Forest Rangers when given, and use Murphy's law.
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