Lessons Learned from our Test Run Camping Trip: Firewood

Bring some firewood with you (but don't bring from outside the area due to protect the local trees), even if you are allowed to collect wood in the park. For our first night, I had planned for hot dogs, potatoes, and corn on the cob cooked in the fire followed by s’mores for dessert. So the fire was absolutely essential, or we would have nothing to eat other than graham crackers and candy bars. We hadn’t carried the stove, propane, or any other food to the campground. We hadn't brought any firewood with us, only some newspaper and a small amount of kindling.

We had to set up the tents and build a fire before we could cook anything, and everyone was tired. When we started to look for wood, we realized that the campground had been pretty well picked over before we got there, and we didn't have flashlights or any good lighting to venture too far away looking.

In addition to not having much wood, we had a hard time starting the fire. We managed to get enough of a fire going to cook dinner, but it wasn’t easy. We know the basics of building a fire, but it's never an easy thing, even when you feel like you've done everything right. I'll write another post later about some of the things we've learned and how we got better at building fires over time.

It's important to remember how long it takes the fire to build and get hot, and then how long it takes to cook food. We really should have started our fire at least an hour before people were hungry, but arrived at the campsite too late for that. It takes potatoes, for example, a long time to cook, and some of ours never got completely done. Hot dogs, on the other hand, are already cooked, so warming them up is sufficient.