Camping with a cabin luggage

How to camp without bringing all the gear in the plane ? It is very possible! We invite you to read this article to know it all!

Context: Yannick and myself have a convention planned in Seattle in April. After what we wish to continue our trip a bit more south in the objective to camp for the first time of the year. We decide to buy a plane ticket to Las Vegas. Red Cliffs, Zion National Park, Horseshoe Bend, Grand Canyon, Hoover Dam and of course Las Vegas are all part of our itinerary for the 5 day trip.

Viva Las Vegas 

For the ones who know us, we normally are accompanied by our loyal companion Rolland (our van!). In the context, we travel by plane and decide to rent a car in Las Vegas, but not any car, a mini-van! This will let us sleep in the car once the seats are lowered. Having not reserved any camp sites, we wish to be as stealth as possible in the case we need to sleep in rest areas.

Finding camping gear; GPS closest Walmart

We always travel light in the plane. Most of the time we each have a personal item and a cabin luggage. The only camping items that we have brought with us are our burner and pots and pans in order to cook.

It is quite a show to get off the plane and see a hotel complex and end up at Walmart in a mini van. Inflatable mattress, cooler, blankets, pillows, plates/utensils (don’t buy disposables!!), food, ice and hop we are autonomous! For about 300$ we have all that we need for the week.

Throughout our stay, we realize that we are missing a few items, but that is not a problem as we cross many stores on the road. :-)

The routine

After the first night, we already established our mini van life routine. The beauty of this type of trip is that we are immersed into nature first thing in the morning. To note that we have been very lucky in campground hunting during our stay in the month of April. At sunrise we get out of the mini van, we make our bed - yes it is important to make your bed in such a small space - we prepare a good coffee and discuss about our day plans.  In another article we will talk about the details of our 5 day itinerary across the Utah and Arizona canyons

Wait... its already over??

Our stay coming to an end, we need to take a decision on what we can keep on the purchased material. Not to forget that we travel with cabin luggage, we are therefore limited on the space and liquids!. Our material being almost in new state, we wash our blankets at the campground laundromat, we deflate the mattress, we empty the cooler and we look for a place where we can pay it forward. In our case, we have found a senior center in Williams city by the Route 66 where they accept food and our material! They take absolutely everything and everyone is delighted!