Car Camping: Our 1st Trip (and 5 tips to help on your first trip, too)

For our first car camping trip, we decided to go with a weekend away so that we could get used to the idea before taking a longer vacation.

We live in central Illinois, and unfortunately, there really aren't very many exciting places near us. Obviously, for a weekend trip, we wanted to stay within 4-6 hours from home. Any further than that, and we would need to allow more than 48 hours. So, while I wish we could have visited Glacier National Park in Montana or Arches National Park in Utah or even Pigeon Forge in Tennessee, we had to settle for someplace much closer to home. Don't get me wrong, I've visited Shawnee National Forest before, and it is pretty, but we'll talk about that more another time.

TIP #1: My first tip, if you're looking to try car camping, is to do a weekend away someplace near home to see if it's something you even like before planning some huge trip.

So, Friday at lunch time, we took off. My husband could only take a half day off from work so we couldn't leave any earlier than that. We drove the 4 hours down to Shawnee National Forest, and looked for a place to set up camp.

TIP #2: If you are able, reserve your campsite in advance. If you're going to an area with first come-first serve camping, make sure you have a back-up campground or two in case the one you go to first is full.

TIP #3: Organization is key! In order to keep from overwhelming yourself, it's best to stay organized. If you have to move everything before you sleep, that takes time. And then, if you have to move everything again in order to drive your car, that takes more time. Plus, you don't want to spend all of the rest of your time looking for things that you can't find like a lighter or bug spray.

TIP #4: Download trails before you leave home. I mean, I know that's not exactly about car camping, but so frequently, the places you're going to camp are going to be far from cell service. You definitely don't want to get lost, so if you plan to take any trails, download an app like AllTrails, upgrade to Pro, and download the trails you plan to take. It will save you headaches later.

TIP #5: Test everything before you go to make sure you know what you're doing. The very first time I tried to use our propane stove, it didn't work. I have no idea what I did wrong, but the second time I tried, it worked great. It would have been far worse had we been on our trip and realized we didn't know how to use it or that it was broken.