Some Little Camping Tent Tips

Camping is a great activity that became popular in the early 20th century. If you haven't heard of it, it's when the participants (campers) leave urban areas and spend a few nights outdoors, usually in a campsite. Here are some camping tips for people, who like to travel lightly with backpacks in the wilderness. They will also be useful for people who like camping, but prefer to stay in the campground:

Once you've acquired your camping tent, try running a few tests on it (your backyard will do nicely). Your task is to check the tent's integrity, because you don't want to find yourself under a leaking roof in the middle of nowhere. Just choose a nice sunny day to deploy your tent in a backyard and examine it from both inside and outside. You could even put it upside down and pour some water inside to find holes in it;

Examine the surroundings before deploying a campsite. Avoid camping on roots, dirt or rocks because they'll wear out the tent bottom and it is very uncomfortable to sleep in such tent. Also, try not to set your tent in a slope, unless you have a personal tent and you'll sleep there on your own. If you've placed a tent in a slope, and there will be lots of people sleeping in it, be sure they'll slide into each other or into a wet, condensate wall. Experienced campers always look for a higher ground or for a place that will be protected from the rain and remove all the garbage before setting a tent;

If you're setting a tent and you see it's about to rain in a few hours, try to set the tent and all the lines as tight as possible (especially the lines on the rain fly) and the condensation will not drip on you;

Try to organize your load to be as light as possible, because the tent is often the heaviest thing you'll carry. One could also take a tarp sack instead of a tent, thus decreasing the load. Another way to reduce the overall weight is to bring just 6 tent stakes and the rest can be found in the forest, or the tent can be tied to a big rock or a tree.

Some campers use heavy ground clothes to save the tent bottom. Doing so is great as tent bottom is damaged less but you must think twice as it's additional weight and it can catch rain water if not placed properly.

To minimize your load, find a nylon tarp as they weigh less than rain flies and you can tie it to a tree or a rock.

Take some time and have some practice in setting up and dismantling tents. It is a very important thing to know and there may not be time for you to learn on the way. If you don't know what kind of tent to buy, search the Internet for camping forums and there you'll find lots of tent reviews and some interesting techniques.

Last but not the least - choose the right size of the camping tent for your group and don't forget to set a little piece of plastic, which will serve you as a door mat.