Camping? How to ship your gear without a mishap
It’s the unexpected things that make camping trips memorable, said Sarah Duffy, a 27-year-old office worker from Oklahoma City. But she remembers her 2013 weekend trip to Assateague National Seashore in Maryland as “unexpectedly terrible.”
“I tried to be clever and mailed everything to [nearby] Ocean City [Md.],” said the veteran camper. “I’d been thinking about doing that for years, you know, to save money by not taking all my gear on the plane. It would have worked, too, if it got there on time.”
Ms. Duffy’s mail-in camping horror story is similar to other tales shared among tent campers who’ve attempted to travel on the cheap by shipping their gear in advance. When it works, however, mail-in camping can open up a world of outdoor adventures that may be too pricey to reach by paying extra airline baggage rates.
“When I got to the Ocean City post office, all that was waiting for me was a thunderstorm,” said Ms. Duffy. “I mailed everything. Clothes, sleeping bag, even my rain gear. It poured all weekend. I sat in the [rental] car. [The packages] didn’t get there until the day after I left.”
In theory, mail-in camping is as easy as making mountain pies. Put it in a box, ship it out, pick it up and make camp. In practice, if the boxes don’t arrive on time it’s like making mountain pies without the pie irons, literally.
Start by comparing the costs of flying your camping gear in the jet’s baggage hold or shipping it via roadway freight. There are no industry standards. Each airline has its own way of calculating extra baggage rates. Every overland shipping company does it differently — that includes the U.S. Postal Service, UPS, FedEx and DHL as well as AmTrak, Greyhound and other long-distance bus companies.
If you camp often enough to even consider mail-in camping, you have more gear than you realize. Ms. Duffy said calculating what to take, what she could live without, the cost of shipping extra baggage on the airline versus shipping rates at a half-dozen roadway shipping companies made her head hurt.
“My mistake was it was too complicated to really compare all the ways I could ship boxes from Oklahoma City to Ocean City and back,” she said. “It took too long, and by the time I finally decided on [using] the post office, I was cutting it too close. [The boxes] arrived late. I was miserable.”
In December I traveled to St. Petersburg, Fla., visited with friends and camped on the seashore. With Ms. Duffy’s camping horror story in mind, I devised a hybrid travel-camping strategy I call “buy-new/mail-out.”
At home in two carry-on-size bags I stuffed a two-person tent, an air mattress and electric pump, two tarps, a tightly rolled sleeping bag, bed sheet and camping pillow, a rain jacket and pants, three changes of clothes and toiletries. On the plane I wore a hat and a light jacket and filled my pockets with a cell phone and
charger, clip-on hat light, polarized sunglasses, wallet and change, handkerchief and a little 2-inch work tool with an even smaller blade, which a humorless TSA agent assured me was never going to make it onto that plane. For the sake of airline security I sacrificed that work tool, knowing that my first destination after renting a car at the Tampa International Airport would be a pre-planned stop at Walmart. With carryon bags and the buy-new part of my plan, I prevented any risk of a mail-in camping gear disaster.
At the store I picked up a cheap folding camp chair, a plastic tablecloth, a long-neck lighter, two disposable aluminum cooking pans, cooking tongs, plastic plates and utensils, two additional changes of clothes, sunscreen and insect repellant (which I didn’t use) a $5 hatchet and a better work tool than the one that gave its life that I might fly. And thinking a little Christmastime cheer would brighten my seaside campsite, I bought a festive laserlight projector and an extension cord.
Fort DeSoto Park Campground was wonderful, and visiting with friends was fun. I ate out or made no-cook breakfasts, cooked some really good camp dinners, and while Pittsburgh shivered under 2 feet of snow I celebrated the season at my seaside site beside nightly campfires.
Strictly following my mail-out plan, I left the hatchet and a few other items with friends and on the way to the airport made a preplanned detour to a UPS store. The kid behind the counter helped me bury my camping gear under Styrofoam packing peanuts in two odd-size cardboard boxes and ship them home for less than $100.
All told, I flew to Florida, rented wheels and the gas to roll them, purchased gear and food, camped six nights, flew out and mailed stuff back home for about $750. The airline wanted to sell me an extra round-trip seat for my guitar, but while in St. Pete I wildly offset any savings I had accrued by purchasing a six-string travel guitar the size of a baritone ukulele — a guitalele — suitable for carry-on storage in the overhead bin.
What good is a seaside site and campfire without a little music?