Well at the start of our adventuring we pretty much owned no camping equipment at all so we had to buy some. We drove a Nissan Versa on these trips and that little car did wonders even while traversing some pretty rough logging roads in the north of Ontario. Along the way as we accumulated some things we needed we also bought a soft shell roof top pack sack for the car. This thing worked out great and easily carried a bunch of our stuff for us, this is where our inflatable raft travelled, along with a few other things for the remainder of the trip.
Our first tent was a very large two room eight person tent. It was the Hampton’s tent by Coleman.
We also use air mattresses that require power to pump them up so we had power with us. We used a small 600 watt inverter that was wired to the car battery to give us basic power to pump those up and charge our devices as needed.
All three of us had our own folding chairs that we used all the time, for lounging around our campsites. We didn’t really take to trails at this time as we weren’t really that aware of them and were simply enjoying some time together as a family.
We learned quickly, at Grundy Lake Provincial Park that we needed a dining tent to at least cook in. The bugs weren’t that bad but once we got some heat going with our Coleman two burner stove they really started to come out. Quen pretty much does all of the meal work so we needed to protect her and our food. It also simply adds a level of comfort that when needed is very nice.
We used fishing poles and some basic gear but it’s not something we commonly do or carry with us.
We have decent Roots sleeping bags, nothing extraordinary but they work very well on cold nights and aren’t overly warm on more mild evenings.
I’ll detail out some more gear in a more precise way in the future but this was the start of our camping adventures, basic family gear usually bought from Coleman as it’s common and reasonable in price.