Keeping Expenses Low
The expense of a week-end spent in motor camping may be made very slight. The equipment may be simple. Of course, the camper has a car to start with, whether flivver or something more elaborate.
An outdoor week-end tent to pitch alongside his car may be bought as cheap as $10.50. Or for about the same price he may get a bed to go from end to end of the car that will supply comfortable sleeping accommodations for two people. Special equipment of this sort is made for Ford touring and sedan types (see Chapter [IV]). If the week-end camper is ingenious he may rig up a bed of his own by disposing the seat cushions and his suit cases so as to form a foundation on which to lay his quilts and blankets. A bed inside the car is mighty convenient in rainy weather, but in a small car the quarters are a little close for complete comfort.
As for clothing, we have already had the advice of an experienced forester. Mr. Average Citizen, however, can usually get along with an old suit of clothes, an extra set of underwear and a second pair of socks. After a little experience, the week-end camper will be surprised to find how little he really requires in the way of extra equipment.
The Diet
When it comes to the matter of food, it is difficult to lay down rules, as there is such a difference in [[24]]the matter of taste and appetite. One man will get along finely with some hard-tack or stale bread to which he adds some canned beef and cheese. He will also take along some seasonable fruit. Mainly for the sake of something hot he will take along some ground coffee and a tin pail in which to cook it over an open fire or on a Boy Scouts’ theroz stove. With several loaves of bread, two pounds of the canned beef, a pound or two of cheese, and the fruit and coffee he will fare finely over the week-end. Another man must have his butter, hot meat, eggs, hot bread, etc., or he will suffer.
The Stove
It is a convenience to have some sort of a regular camp stove of the folding variety that will take wood fuel. An open fire may be made with very little fuel, and is most camplike. In some places an open fire is forbidden, and if permission to camp has to be secured from a private owner of a site favorable action is much more likely if it is stated that there will be no open camp fire. In rainy weather, too, the camp fire is likely to be a problem. If it is intended to depend on the open fire either under the shelter of a tent, if rainy, or in the open, it will be well to take along a few pieces of dry wood that may easily be split up for kindling.