As part of the flock, we know you love the best of the best when it comes to being out on an adventure. After years of exploring, hundreds of trips in our Roofnest, and countless hours spent finding new ingenious ways to improve products, we put together a list of our 10 favorite camping hacks.
1) Stay Warm at Night With a Nalgene
Some nights get cold no matter what gear you have and some people were just born with cold feet! One hack we have found spending nights out in the blistering cold in our Roofnest is to fill up our Nalgene with hot water before bed and toss it in the bottom of our sleeping bags. This will not only keep your feet warm but will warm your entire bag, keeping you nice and toasty throughout the night.
2) Garbage Bags Aren’t Only For Garbage
You truly never know what mother nature will throw at you while out on the trail, but what you do know is that wet gear sucks. Take a garbage bag and line the inside of your backpack with it to keep your stuff dry during an impromptu rainstorm. Stuff the bag with all of your gear, toss it in your backpack and head out knowing even if it rains, you will have something dry to change into afterward!
3) Stuff Sack Pillow
Luckily you can always leave your pillow in your Roofnest, but sometimes you forget things and no one likes to lay down at night without a pillow. Luckily there is an easy solution! If you find yourself curling up in bed and realize you forgot your pillow, take your sleeping bags stuff sack and fill it with your clothes. And if you are away from your Roofnest for the night backpacking this is a great way to save space!
4) Fluffy Sleeping Bags Forever
Nothing is better than crawling into your Roofnest after a long day of exploring and hopping into your nice fluffy down sleeping bag. Problem is, after cramming your sleeping bag into its stuff sack over and over most bags tend to lose their fluff. One way to keep your sleeping bag fluffy for all of your future trips is to dry it with tennis balls. Throw your bag in the dryer with a few tennis balls and it will break up the down to preserve loft.
5) Spice Up Your Campfire Cooking
For a compact and convenient way to store all of your spices take old Tic-Tac boxes and fill them with portions of your spices. This way you can carry all of your go-to spices and be the Camp chef you know you are.
6) Single Use Soap Bar
We love using all natural bars of soap while out Nesting, but the problem is that storing a used bar of soap gets messy. Luckily we found the solution. Take your favorite all natural soap, ours is from Colorado Real Soap Company, and a vegetable peeler. You can peel off thin single-use soap bars that are perfect for keeping you and the environment clean, no need for a messy plastic bag.
7) Mini First Aid Kit
It is always a good idea to have a full blown first aid kit on hand when on the road, but sometimes you don’t have the space to carry as much when out on the trail. Take an Altoid tin or an old prescription bottle and fill it with a couple small first aid ingredients, such as band-aids, Neosporin, and gauze in case of an emergency…. Or a nasty blister on the trail.
8) Wallet Size Fire Starters
Bringing classic firestarters can add a lot of extra weight to your pack, or just simply take up room in your rig. With these handy little fire starters, you can rest assured that no space is taken up and they are light as a feather. Take classic cotton pads and dip them in wax, throw one under your kindling and within seconds you’ll have a roaring campfire.
9) Never Have Soggy Food Again
A lot of our flock head out into the mountains for multiple days at a time, sometimes even weeks. One problem with keeping ice in the cooler is not only making sure that it doesn’t all melt too quickly but that once it does melt, your food stays dry. An easy solution for this is to freeze gallon jugs of water to replace a bag of ice. These gallon jugs will stay frozen for longer periods of time, won’t leak into your cooler once they melt, and the bonus is that you have clean ice cold water to enjoy once they do melt! Make sure to take a couple sips out of the bottle before freezing to account for expansion and increase in altitude.
10) Mosquitoes Be Gone!
Some of our favorite activities like kayaking, fishing, and plain old floating are all around water, but the one problem is there are also a ton of mosquitoes around water. No one likes to smell like bug spray and cover themselves or their clothes in chemicals. Luckily now there is no need! Simply add a bundle or two of sage to your next campfire to keep those pesky bugs away when relaxing after a long day.
