Since moving to Montana, I’ve realized I have a lot of posts about camping and hiking in certain areas and in those posts, I try to make recommendations and link to the camping gear that we use and love. I find that’s one of our favorite ways to see what works from other travel/outdoorsy bloggers.
BUT, if you’re just looking for camping/hiking gear, there’s not a very clear place to find that on my site…
UNTIL NOW!
I made this page for you if you find yourself wanting to try camping in any season, but just don’t know where to start with all the gear you need.
Some of the links on this page will be affiliate links, but rest assured that you’ll never pay a higher price and everything on this page is something we use and love. I’ll come back to add to it when we try out new gear, too.
Canvas Tent
If you’re interested in winter camping, a canvas tent is a must. This tent has a stove jack in the top so you can put a wood burning stove in the tent with you to keep you warm. It also has a large opening which was easy to get in and out of. We purchased the tent that sleeps 4 people and it was big enough to have the wood burning stove and our two sleeping cots inside.
Wood Burning Stove
Austin is the KING of research, so he looked up a ton of wood burning stoves and settled on one from Montana Canvas. This stove was small enough to fit comfortably inside our canvas tent and large enough to house wood to keep us warm for several hours. It doesn’t look like they have our exact stove anymore, but this company has solid, quality products, so I’d consider one of the stoves that they have now.
Sleeping Cots
I was so happy when we decided to buy sleeping cots instead of just using sleeping bags. While more people can fit in your tent with sleeping bags, the cots are so much more comfortable and they keep you off of the cold ground, so you actually stay warmer!
The Colman Camping Cot was perfect and folds up for easy storage.
Insect Repellent
The only thing I hate more than being surrounded by bugs is wearing sticky, icky-feeling bug spray to keep them away, especially when I’m camping and I can’t shower it off at the end of the day. However, this Ranger Ready insect repellent goes on and doesn’t leave my skin feeling gross at all. It doesn’t even leave a scent if you go with their “no scent” option (they also have scented if that’s your thing).
Ranger Ready also uses Picaridin instead of DEET which is what makes your skin still feel clean after you’ve sprayed it on. It’s also effective for a lot longer than traditional insect repellent.
The P2 Pack comes with two cans of Ranger Ready repellent that are the perfect size to take with you camping!
Lodge Cast Iron Skillet
We cook everything in our cast iron skillet these days – even at home. When we go camping, it comes with us! Food just genuinely tastes better when it’s cooked in cast iron.
We haven’t found the perfect camp stove yet, so I don’t want to give a recommendation for that, but this is the perfectly-sized cast iron skillet to take with you on a camp trip! You can set it on top of your wood burning stove, a fire, or a portable stove to make just about anything you could want to eat.
Coffee Percolator
One of the easiest ways to make coffee while your camping is with a percolator. This is sometimes called “cowboy coffee” and it’s very easy to make. You simply bring water to a boil in the percolator, add in coffee grounds, let it all boil for a few minutes, and then pour cold water into the percolator. The cold water forces all the coffee grounds to the bottom, so your cup of coffee will be (mostly) free of loose grounds.
This method doesn’t require anything fancy. You just need something to boil water in and this percolator was perfect for us!
More to come soon!
Like I said above, I wanted to start this post so that I can add recommendations to it as we find more and more gear that we love and can’t help but recommend. Gear will be added here as we continue camping and I’ll also be adding a page similar to this for hiking gear as well as a separate one for my favorite travel gear.
If you have a specific brand or item that you LOVE, please let me know in the comments so we can try it for ourselves!
