Jaffe Matthew - Camp Sunset: A Modern Campers Guide to the Great Outdoors

CONTENTS

CAMP

SUNSET

A MODERN CAMPERS GUIDE TO THE GREAT OUTDOORS

Edited by Elaine Johnson and the Editors of Sunset with Matt Jaffe

SAWTOOTH NATIONAL RECREATION AREA, IDAHO

2016 Time Inc. Books

Published by Oxmoor House, an imprint of Time Inc. Books

225 Liberty Street, New York, NY 10281

Sunset is a registered trademark of Sunset Publishing Corporation.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, excepting brief quotations in connection with reviews written specifically for inclusion in magazines or newspapers, or limited excerpts strictly for personal use.

WRITERS Matt Jaffe, Paige Russell

EDITORS Elaine Johnson, Betty Wong

CREATIVE DIRECTOR Maili Holiman

DESIGNER Christy Sheppard Knell

PRODUCTION MANAGER Linda M. Bouchard

PRINCIPAL PHOTOGRAPHER Thomas J. Story

PHOTO EDITOR Susan B. Smith

COPY EDITOR Tam Putnam

ASSOCIATE DESIGNER Allison Chi

IMAGING SPECIALIST E. Spencer Toy

EDITORIAL ASSISTANT Nicole Fisher

ASSISTANT PROJECT EDITOR Melissa Brown

ASSISTANT PRODUCTION DIRECTOR Susan Chodakiewicz

PROOFREADER Denise Griffiths

INDEXER Ken DellaPenta

For additional .

eISBN: 978-0-84874-943-9

Library of Congress Control Number: 2016931557

Printed in the United States of America

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

First Printing 2016

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Preface

COME CAMPING WITH SUNSET!

A couple of summers back, the editors of Sunset magazine in California held a contest for a camping weekend, inviting our readers to tell us why theyd like to join us.

Entries arrived in an avalanche. Some were from newbies, like the woman who had requested a camp stove for her 50th birthday but wasnt sure how to turn it on. A Cub Scout den leader admitted to an aversion to camping. One reader had decorated her entire family room in a glamping theme, but had yet to venture on a real camping trip. Young parents told us how the arrival of children made them fear their camping days were over. And then there were mixed couplesone who felt happy and confident in the outdoors after growing up as a camper; the other who wouldnt venture beyond resorts. Could we help them find common ground?

Eventually we chose two families, all excellent sports, and they headed to Big Basin Redwoods National Park with us for the first-ever Camp Sunset.

Guided by our editors12 of us, including meplus some invited experts, the set out to get over their hesitancy about camping and to learn the skills the modern camper needs to know. Together we worked on the tried-and-true: pitching tents, building fires, singing songs, and making smores. And we explored the cutting edgehow to make camping comfortable and even pretty, how to shake cocktails and bake chocolate cake in a dutch oven. For extra fun, our campers earned merit badges for their efforts.

As you can imagine, we had a blast. But who knew that the trip would be just the beginning? As the weekend drew to a close, our campers shyly admitted that they had learned a ton but still needed much more on the basics. And back at the office, the avalanche of contest entries remained from other would-be campers. We wished we could have taken every one of them on the trip.

More than anything, their entries spoke to a longing for the deep connection of time spent in nature. Even non-campers seemed to understand that a sojourn outdoors nurtures the soul and brings everyone together. They just didnt know how to get started.

And so we got started on this book.

Camping DNA

Since Sunset s founding in 1898, exploring the Wests wild places has been part of our bread and butter (or hash balls and bacon grease, going by our 1901 story titled Practical Hints on Camp Cooking). Stories and books over the years have mirrored innovations in camping gear, not to mention refinements in camp cuisine.

In a 1917 story, we praised options for comfortable car camping, especially a camp-body made for your car (the first RVs were introduced in Los Angeles in 1910). It resembles closely an undertakers wagon, but only in appearance. It can be fitted to a chassis by any good wagon-builder in an hour. Stories about new camping equipment like gasoline stoves came out around the same time.

Our first camp cookbook, Sunsets Grubstake Cookbook , debuted in 1934, with charming but brief advice for adventuring and creating recipes for stews, pancakes, and the like.

By 1959, wed raised the standards for food; our story The Art of Camp Cookery included directions for roasting bacon and just-caught trout on a stick, and baking mincemeatport wine pie in a dutch oven.

Glamorous camping, or glamping, was a newly coined term in 2008. Problem: Love the outdoors, hate camping. Solution: Swap your sleeping bag for a feather bed, our May magazine cover story promised. Readers took to the concept like blue jays to pancake crumbs.

Since then, weve published near-yearly features on the best campgrounds, gear, and four-star recipes; in 2014, we included a chapter of adventurous camping recipes in The Great Outdoors Cookbook (Oxmoor House).

A new book for a new era

As we discovered at our Camp Sunset weekend, it was time for a camping book that brought together our years of advice into one handy, beginner-friendly volume. In keeping with the modern era, youll find loads of complementary resources on sunset.com/campsunset , including last-minute campsites, guides to the national parks, our favorite deluxe RV trailers, and how-to camping videos.

Go ahead, come camping with Sunset. We guarantee youll have the time of your life along the way.

Elaine Johnson

Introduction

ITS THE STARS THAT GET YOU FIRST. After the campfire dies down and the sweet confection of a smore is just a remembrance on your tongue, your eyes adjust to the darkness, and the arching reach of the heavens is revealed as if for the first time. You stand agape, marveling. And should something wake you in the wee hours, youll find the twinkling even brighter, the black background blacker, the Milky Way attendant. These are not the stars of home, few and pale.

The great joy of camping is not that you get to spend the night in a tent, but that camping sweeps away the layers between you and whats most natural, which is you, in nature. Thats why it doesnt matter if youre sleeping in a platform tent with duvets and turndown service or on the ground in a wispy backpacking shelter. Camping covers a huge spectrum, from dehydrated astronaut food to catered repasts, from the remote Alaska tundra of Denali National Park to the miles of sand at Half Moon Bay less than an hour from San Francisco. No matter your style or location, the point is to watch time slow down, to feel your body align itself with the rhythms of the universe. To be in the clear, clean air so long that you forget to marvel at how clear and clean it is.