Here at Youth Odyssey we are passionate about camping, it is a way for us to connect with nature and the outdoors. Many friendships have been built during our program camping trips. One of the main things we need when we go camping anywhere, is our tent. The tent is our main shelter on camping trips. We take pride in taking care of our equipment so we can have a place to sleep!
The main thing to remember when packing our tents, is to always think of our tents as one whole piece. We don't want to think of it as separate pieces because it makes things more difficult. The first step is to clean it out of all the gear, equipment, dirt, etc. Once we have it cleaned out, we can begin the packing process.
The second step is simple, we place our rain fly inside the tent. To make this step even easier on us, we keep it erected so we can move around inside it with the rain fly. Once we have the rain fly evenly spread out inside, we can move to step three. For step three we close all the doors, but keep the windows open. We do this because later when we go to roll it up, the air can easily come out! Mind blowing right!?
After step three is finished we move onto step four. In this step we drop our tents down, and put our poles in their proper bags. This part is a lot easier with some extra hands. Grabbing a buddy or two for the take down is usually the best idea. Now our tent is down, which means now it's time for step five! We are getting close to being done I promise! For step five we fold our tents in equal size/length as our tent bag. This is a part that is often times over looked, but yet it makes so much sense!
Explore!
Well, now we have it folded in perfect length/size, this only means it's time to roll it up. This is our FINAL step, we roll up our tent and put it in the bag! To make this step easy, we use our tent poles and tent-stake bags to roll our tents up. Simply place the tent pole bag on the edge of the tent (folded hamburger style) and roll tightly like a sushi roll. If we follow these steps to perfection, our tents usually look very sharp when all packed up.
Now we have given you our tent packing knowledge. It's time for you to put it into practice! Pack your bags, you are going camping!
