Setting Up Your Campsite With Jim Sexton

Hey, I’m Jim Sexton with Bassmaster’s Go Out{side}. I’m going to show you the seven simple steps for going camping. You might ask why do I want to go camping? What are the benefits of camping? And I’ll tell you.

In this day and age, with so many screens, so much data, so much Internet everywhere we go– that getting out in nature for spells of time is great for your health. It’s great for your families and relationships. It’s great for bonding. It’s a great way to make memories, so I’m going to show you the easy ways to do it– and it really is easy — and it can be inexpensive.

We’re going to talk about tents now– and before you pick the spot to put your tent down, make sure it’s flat.

Make sure there are no roots– and literally get down on the ground and feel around because

getting a good night’s sleep is so dang important to having a good time. So, if there’s a there’s a root or a rock or something like that. You want to move it out of the way — so you want to get rid of all that stuff and make your tent situation really nice and flat..

I really like this spot.

It’s really nice.

Let’s talk a little bit about how you pick a camping site.

In a State Park or a place that has designated camping spots– That’s pretty easy. You know you’re going to camp in one of those spots, and they typically have a place for you to put your tent. They’ve got a picnic table. They’ve got a fire pit.. If you’re in a more wide open space and you have your choice of camping anywhere– and that’s what we are doing, that’s where we are today. We could camp anywhere in this area.

One thing you gotta think about is–

Don’t get in a place that’s soggy.

Or a place where a little stream or a River or water is going to get close to your tent. Put a piece of plastic on the ground before you put your tent down. And we’ve got here– just a simple piece of plastic. And what that does is it– It keeps moisture from coming up through the through the floor of the tent and making you colder and moister and also protects the tent a little bit.

You don’t want anything to poke through your tent.

You want to stake it down right down here. Put stakes in the ground. Tents come with stakes.

Put it in the ground.

It’s pretty Straight forward.

This is a three man tent. First thing – you need to decide is how many people do you want in that tent. If you’ve got two people, this is a great size tent. You got three? I’d go a little bigger, got 4 even bigger — and there are tents that will hold 6-7 people. Big giant tents. You could also get two small ones and split your family up that way.

What a tent does for you is–

It keeps you protected if there’s rain, so most tents are going to have a rain fly on top, so you’ve got two layers here, rainfly, and the inside of the tent.

And the surprising thing with people inside– is when you get all zipped up in there, the moisture in your breath can condense in the tent and get things kind of wet. You got two or three people sleeping together. So what this does? The moisture goes through the first layer, gets on the rain fly — and your tent stays nice and dry.

So most tents will also have the ability to– to have a screen and this one has a screen built in that you can unzip and open it up to let air flow through. That’s it for tents for now. Tents are key. They’re fun and let’s get out there and have fun with them.