Camping and RV Guides for Beginners

Camping isn't difficult. It's just full of small things nobody mentions until you've already got one wrong. Where the water goes when it rains at two in the morning. Why the cold wakes you from underneath rather than around you. What a booking page doesn't tell you about the site you just paid for. This site is for the stage before you know what you don't know. Pick a topic above and we'll get you sorted, so the only thing you remember about your first trip is the good part.
Tent heater safety: a tent glowing orange from a heat source inside on a frosty night, above the words not while you sleep

Don’t sleep with a fuel-burning heater running in your tent. No official source we checked says otherwise, which makes it the one settled rule of tent heater safety. Awake is where the answers split: the U.S.…

How to keep a tent warm: a taut dome tent at blue hour with a lofted sleeping bag ready inside

The way to keep a tent warm is to keep you warm inside it, and most of that work happens before dark. Get insulation between your body and the ground, go to bed dry, stop moving…

How to connect an RV sewer hose: clear elbow sealed in a riser, gray hose rising on a support toward a travel trailer

Here’s how to connect an RV sewer hose: check that both tank valves are closed, take the cap off the outlet, push the hose’s bayonet fitting onto the outlet’s lugs and turn it until it stops…

How to dump RV tanks: black tank empties first, then the gray tank rinses the sewer hose

Black first, then gray. That order exists for one reason: the gray water rinses the inside of your sewer hose on the way out, and nothing else you carry does that job as well. Almost everything…

How to level a camper: travel trailer tire centered on stepped yellow leveling blocks at a fall campground

Here’s how to level a camper, start to finish: raise the low side on leveling blocks while you’re still hitched, chock the wheels, unhitch, then run the tongue jack until the floor reads level front to…

How to set up an RV at a campsite: travel trailer connected to a campground pedestal by its power cord

Learning how to set up an RV at a campsite is mostly learning one fixed order: position the rig, level it, shut off the pedestal breaker and connect power, then water, then sewer, then open the…

Canvas tent repair showing a torn, frayed canvas fabric panel being examined at the fiber and seam level, with the damaged weave transitioning to a reinforced fabric patch and resealed stitched seam.

Canvas fails in a way nylon never does. It rots. A synthetic tent tears when something sharp finds it, and the tear stays roughly the size it started. Cotton quietly loses strength wherever it sat damp,…

Tent repair materials beside an L-shaped tear in a green rainfly

Most tent damage is fixable, and most of it is fixable in twenty minutes with three materials that fit in a sandwich bag. A tear in the fly, a snapped pole section, a zipper that won’t…

Tent accessories laid out on a picnic table showing what to pack and what to skip

Most tent accessories are optional. Four are not: stakes better than the ones in the bag, something under the floor, a light that hangs from the ceiling, and a repair kit small enough that you forget…

How to sharpen a camp hatchet: a mill file resting on the bevel of a hatchet on a stump

Start with a file. Sharpen a camp hatchet with a mill bastard first, pushing into the edge until a burr forms along the back, then refine it with a sharpening puck and finish on a strop.…