Camping gear is expensive, especially tents and it's probably the main reason why many are reluctant to go camping. It's a big investment, more so in these tough economic times and a tough one to make until you're sure you're going to camp regularly. One way to know if you're going to like camping is by cabin camping.

It's cheaper in the short term but much more luxurious than normal camping. It's not like sleeping in a cabin tent on a camping mattress. It's more than that. The walls are solid and you're going to be sleeping on a bed. Sometimes there's a dining table or a small table. There's even a couch in some cabins. It's a great way to camp during winter.

These cabins are available in many state parks in the U.S.. They don't completely eliminate the necessity of camping gear. You still need a camp stove and cookware for cooking, towel, flip-flops and toiletries. If electricity is available, you can bring some appliances.

http://www.koa.com/facilities/kabin/

According to eVent, their fabrics "lets sweat escape up to twice as fast as common waterproof/breathables.". Now that's a big claim but is it true? It seems to me that GoreTex "breathes" at the same rate judging from the video below. The only way to know for sure if this claim is true is by using a high-speed camera and timing it.

It may be just a slight difference but who knows how it performs in real life situations. That slight difference can be significant, or not. I have to say that it's more of a magic show than real proof.

The simple answer to this is the number of walls. 2 vs 1. But what does it imply?

It's not just that 2 walls keep you warmer than 1 wall in cold weather, double wall tents are known to keep you dry even better than single wall tents. This is because in a double wall tent, the fly keeps the rain and snow at bay while the inner tent expels the moist air so that it condenses on the fly (in cases ventilation doesn't do the trick) which then drips to the ground instead of the user.

A single wall tent has to rely on one wall to do both i.e. deal with moisture from inside and outside. So the fabric has to be waterproof and breathable. Breathable fabrics may not be enough to battle condensation effectively so you have to rely on venting.

The upside to single wall tents is that they're lighter and less bulky. Double wall tents have more parts and hence heavier and bulkier.

At 11,239 feet above sea level, Mount Hood is the highest mountain in Oregon and a magnet for adventure seekers. Like many places like it, it's also where many accidents have happened.

We mourn for Luke Gullberg who was found dead Saturday due to hypothermia. Two other hikers are still missing and search has been suspended due to heavy snow that cover most of the clues and the fact that the chances of finding them are very slim according to rescue experts. But for fear of avalanches, it doesn't seem like the search will continue anytime soon.

Anthony Vietti, 24, and Katie Nolan, 29, are young, healthy, experienced and well equipped but they'll have to make it on their own for now. Good Luck to them.

Getting a permit to backpack overnight at the Grand Canyon is not easy. Half of the applications are denied. Lining up in person on the day when the permits become available does guarantee acceptance even if you've come a long way. In fact, if you're not a local, your chances of getting a permit are quite low.

At least, that's how it will stay until February 2010 when locals will no longer have priority. This is not good news for some of the locals.

Hiking is tough on the knees, especially when you're carrying a heavy backpack. Even when you're young, it's wise to go easy on your knees so that at a later age you can still enjoy hiking.

Thank God for trekking poles. By using these, you take some of the pressure off your legs when you're walking. They give you a boost when you go uphill, absorb some of the impact as you go downhill and give you a better workout.

Trekking poles also help you establish a rhythm when you hike. Your hike becomes much more efficient when you have rhythm.

The trekking pole is one such important backpacking equipment.

Dunno Munson has been feeding bears from her porch for  10 years and this is what she gets.

As it is written, the state law allows persons with valid handgun carry permits to possess handguns in all parks, natural areas, campgrounds and similar public places. Local governments wishing to keep guns out of their parks have until Sept. 1 to opt out.

Read more..

Essex - Partners in Adventure is a unique camping experience that includes disabled and nondisabled youths. In this environment, children of different abilities learn to play with one another, accept one another and acquire knowledge that they can use later in life, Executive Director Deborah Lamden said.

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The award gives us the opportunity to recognize these individuals annually and to draw attention to one our community's important economic engines — the camp industry.

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Going to the woods was once a part of what it meant to be an American. Visits to the National forests today have declined by 13 percent.

Factors that contribute to this decline are include rising gas prices, the popularity of video games and the Internet, and an increasingly urban and aging population less inclined to camp out.

Critics, however, blame it on fees charged for hiking trails and visitor centers, a proliferation of noisy off-road vehicles and the declining proportion of the Forest Service budget dedicated to recreation.

Read more from the Sun Journal.

President Obama and family will be going to Yellowstone on Friday August, 14 then the Grand Canyon on August 16.  The Obamas will also be rolling through Grand Junction and Phoenix.

Like everyone else, they won't be charged the admission fee.

Read more about it at Backpacker.

It turns out that weight is not the only concern when carrying a backpack. According to this article, incorrectly fitting a backpack may cause pain in the neck, shoulders, upper back and lower back.

According to a release from the American Chiropractic Association, backpacks are a "leading cause of back and shoulder pain for millions of children and adolescents."

Find out how to correctly fit a hiking backpack.

The entry fees being waived range from $3 to $25 but it doesn't apply to fees charged for camping, reservations, tours or concessions.

August 15-16 will be the last weekend this summer that the National Park Service is offering this free admission. The other weekends were June 20-21 and July 18-19.

All 391 national parks across the country will be free. For more info, visit NPS.gov.

VANCOUVER (NEWS1130) - 95 percent of our province is in high or extreme forest fire danger and could ignite at any moment. That's from Jeanne Rucker with the Kamloops Fire Centre.

It's very volatile out there that even a small spark from a camp stove could ignite a huge blaze.

Read more..

EDINBURGH, Scotland, Aug. 9 (UPI) — Scottish national parks are dealing with camping equipment so inexpensive many visitors simply abandon tents and sleeping bags, rangers said.

All thanks to the supermarket chain giants Asda and Tesco. 2 person tents cost $15 at Asda and a little bit more at Tesco but with 2 sleeping bags thrown in.

These incredibly cheap tents have been a problem for the officials at Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park for 5 years now.

Read more..

Camp Fannin, where about 200,000 United States Army infantrymen trained from 1943 to 1946, could soon be honored with a Half Mile of History marker in downtown Tyler.

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One of the problems a walker faces in choosing a stove is how to compare their performances. The claims by the manufacturers are notorious for spin, hype and, in a few cases, a bit worse. In this series of articles we will present solid scientific measurements of the performance of a wide range of canister stoves, principally in terms of heating efficiency (grams of gas required) and heating rates (aka boil times).

Read more…

I hard hard feet but I wouldn't go so far as to hike the Appalachian Trail barefooted.  Sisters, Lucy and Susan Letcher did just that and they reportedly liked it.

Read more at Backpacker

Watch CBS Videos Online

Backpacker Magazine, editor in chief talks about Nature Deficit Disorder and the best places in America to raise an outdoor kid:

1. Boulder, Co
2. Jackson, Wy
3. Durango, Co
4. Flagstaff, Az
5. Juneau, Ak

I'm not talking about knights in shining armor. These are the members of the Knightdale High School wrestling team. They spent some quality time together from July 9-14 during their trip to the Appalachian State University wrestling camp.

It was a good team building excercise and the knights were forced to move out of their comfort zone and into a situation where they need to depend on their teammates to be successful.

Several on the team had no camping experience.

The Knights ended up with a dual meet record of 8-3, individually stacking a record of 84-56 on a head-to-head with teams from all over North Carolina and the southeastern United States.

The kids wanted to go camping so they went camping.

Smoking is bad and when I was a smoker I wouldn't admit it openly because I didn't want to be seen as a hypocrite. It's only been a month or so since I've quit but I think I'm free. I've lost all craving for cigarettes and sometimes even hang out with smokers without even feeling the need to smoke the again. If only I had quit sooner.

Giving up smoking is not that hard. I did it by simply being aware of the craving and letting it runs its course. It was a tip used for dealing with panic attacks but as it turns out it worked to quitting smoking as well.

One retired senior banker, Geoff Spice, is taking to extremes in an attempt to quit smoking. He's going to camp in a deserted island for one month.

The former managing director for NM Rothschild, the top London investment bank will become a castaway on Sgarabhaigh, a 40-acre uninhabited island in the Outer Hebrides.

Sgarabhaigh, which means Cormorant Island in Gaelic, also has no electricity or water supply, so he will rely for fires from driftwood and a camp stove and bottled water.

Mr Spice began smoking 43 years ago as a paperboy, when he stole some cigarettes from the shop where he was working. He has been smoking around 30 cigarettes per day.

If you need help quitting, here are some good resources:

The Quit Smoking Expert

Lung Detox

1. Start with a good campground that's close to home with drive-in campsites.

Look for campgrounds you can reach in under an hour from wherever you call home (check your state parks website or visit www.reserveamerica.com for ideas). This makes it easy to start with just an overnight trip, since you can leave Saturday morning after breakfast and still be home Sunday for dinner.

2. When picking your campsite, avoid these locations if you can:

Next to water - The view might be lovely, or the sound of a trickling stream, but with small kids it could be a safety hazard and you may end up constantly chasing your toddler or young kids out of the creek. It may also put you in the thick of mosquitoes come dusk.

Next to the restroom - In the case of pit toilets, the reason may be obvious. But the constant traffic to the john, flushing noises, conversations, and lights can be very disruptive to young sleepers who are already excited about sleeping in the tent.

3. When you'll be sharing a tent with a baby or small kids, test-drive the sleeping arrangements at home first.

Whether you set up the tent in the backyard, or just roll out the sleeping bags in the living room, it's helpful to try a practice run of sleeping "in camp" at home. Let your kids practice sleeping in their sleeping bags-toddlers often wiggle their way out in the night, and if yours does, you'll know you need to dress him in extra warm clothing. Just the prospect of sleeping in a tent can be exciting enough for kids new to camping, and if they don't normally share a room with Mom and Dad at home, so you might want to work through that initial excitement at home rather than in the campground. Also, campers with babies will especially want to test out the baby's sleeping arrangements and attire to make sure they are comfortably warm without being overbundled.

4. Keep the food and cooking simple on your first camping trips.

You don't need to cook up 3-course meals for your family while camping, and you don't even need a camp stove to get started. For a short camping trip, bring bagels or cereal, sandwich fixings, cold veggies, fruit, and a few of your favorite snacks. And by all means, don't forget to bring the marshmallows!