Roughin'It

If you don’t like taking chemicals into the wilderness with you when you camp, you can make a natural mosquito repellant that will help in keeping the pesky pests at bay. Using natural materials is a more environmentally friendly way to keep your campsite relatively bug-free. Check with your physician before you use natural mixtures for your family. You can make your own all natural mosquito repellent by using oils that have repellent properties in them. Some of the oils you may use include:   Citronella Lemon Eucalyptus Cinnamon Castor oil Sunflower oil To make your own formula from mosquito repellent plants, you may opt to make personal-sized or family sized quantities: Step 1 – For the personal size, use

Located along the Pacific Coast Trail, the Idyllwild Campground of Mt. San Jacinto State Park Campground is a great campground for beginner and family campers. Two friends and myself booked our reservation for 2 nights and headed up to Idyllwild for a weekend of camping, cooking and with the primary goal of hiking to the peak of Mount San Jacinto. We selected this campground primarily because the US Forestry sites within the area (further up the mountain) were still closed and wouldn’t open until Memorial Day. Mt. San Jacinto State Park campground opened several weeks earlier and had access to US Forestry Day passes for the hike. The first thing to know is the Mount San Jacinto State Park campground is actually split into

If you plan on camping with friends or family in an unfamiliar area, it’s vital that you learn how to read a compass. This is particularly true if you are going to be in a remote area without signal for your GPS unit or your cell phone. The parts which help a compass to work include: The housing – this is a unit on a base that can be turned, and is made from metal or other materials. This allows the needle on the compass to move easily, as caused by the magnetic north pole of the earth. The direction of the travel arrow is located on the base, and will assist you in your navigation. The needle is the

If you and your family are avid campers, someone has probably needed poison ivy treatment at one time or another. The rash it creates is quite annoying, and learning to treat poison ivy will be an asset on your camping trips. There are logical steps to be taken when treating poison ivy: Step 1 – Clean the skin off as soon as you can. If you can clean it off within ten minutes or less, there is a chance that you will rid your skin of the irritant before it penetrates your skin. You should use rubbing alcohol to cleanse the skin, and then rinse off with cool water. -      Don’t scrub your skin or use warmer water. This can

You probably depend on your cell phone for many things, and we are indeed a technological society. This makes it harder, when you get back to nature, if you have no cell signal. You’ll need to fend for yourself more than you have done in recent years. If you have been an avid camper, you probably are fairly familiar with the basics of survival, and you’ll want to take necessary items for emergency use with you, whenever you camp. The best way to ensure that you have everything you need for emergency use is to make an emergency survival kit, that you always have with you when you camp. Know your camping destination before you head out, and be sure