Heading camping soon? We’re sharing our favorite camping supplies that make camping even more comfortable!
There’s nothing we love more than spending a night under the stars. As we continue to camp more and more, we’ve started to upgrade some of our supplies to make our experience a little more comfortable and to make our car a little less crowded with gear.
We’ve rounded up our 5 favorite camping supplies that are must-haves for us when we are car camping (some of them work for backpacking too!).
These items are beyond the ten essentials, which we recommend always having with you, and are luxuries that we find super helpful.
Looking for a list of items to take backpacking? Check out our backpacking packing list!
Camping Stove
A new addition to our favorite camping supplies is the Coleman Classic Propane Stove. This model of stove seems to have been around for decades. It has a simple design, is cheap, and we’ve even heard that some people have used theirs for 35 years!
It is perfect for setting up on the back of our car tailgate, firing it up, and cooking our favorite meals when were camping, road tripping, and adventuring. In the morning, we like to have one burner dedicated for eggs and the other for cooking breakfast meat and for lunch and dinner, it works perfectly to have one side cooking meat and the other side heating up some delicious veggies.
We also own an Etekcity Ultralight Stove that works well for boiling water, backpacking, and less complicated meals, but the camping stove is perfect if we want something a little more gourmet or want to cook multiple things at once.
Backpacking chairs
Regular camping chairs can be bulky and take up a ton of space in the car. We’re a big fan of backpacking chairs, which are super compact and still comfortable! We recently purchased these Sportneer chairs, which are affordable, super easy to set up (30 seconds or less), and very light (only 2 pounds).
The only thing you lose is a cup holder, but it’s worth saving space in our opinion. We have used these on several camping and backpacking trips and are very pleased with the quality and comfort of these chairs.
Portable Charger
During our adventures, we try to put our phones on airplane mode most of the day so we can be present and enjoy the moments. However, in order to use Google Maps, check in with family and let them know we are okay, have a functioning alarm clock, or just be prepared in case of an emergency, we need to make sure our phones stay charged.
Having a portable charger has been an essential item for us and we love our RAVPower charger, which has two USB ports, so we can both charge our phones at the same time. It also fully charges our phones multiple times on one charge, which is perfect for multi-day camping trips where we are without access to outlets.
Update: Ours isn’t available on Amazon anymore, but we linked to an even better option with 3 USB ports!
Sleeping Pads
We used to bring an air mattress camping, but similar to the chairs, it was bulky in the car and it also took a while to blow it up with a hand pump. We switched to these Outdoorsman Lab sleeping pads mostly for backpacking purposes, but now use them for car camping trips too and love them!
They are super small, portable, and blow up quickly with your mouth. While they aren’t as thick as an air mattress, they fit perfectly under our sleeping bags and definitely make sleeping on the ground much more comfortable.
Cooler
Having a really solid cooler makes it easy to keep food cold without having to continually buy ice or new food. Coming from Austin, Texas, we are big YETI fans (they are headquartered there) and recently purchased a YETI Tundra 45 cooler. It’s definitely a bit pricey, but it has been worth every penny. The cooler has kept our food and drinks cold for days on several trips and it also can function as a bench if needed. We love it so much that we even brought it along for our Utah trip! There are many sizes of YETI coolers (ours is the middle size) and they seem to be dropping in price, which is a huge win!
Looking for new camping supplies?
So much good information! It’s definitely helpful to get recommendations on supplies and also have a convenient link provided for purchasing! Keep up all the helpful information!