CAMPING SITES

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 420, 3 January 1933, Page 7

CAMPING SITES

. HINTS FOR MOTORISTS WHO WILL LIVE OUT OF DOORS. ESSENTIALS NECESSARY. The essentials of a good camping site are pare water, a supply of wood (unless primus stoves are used), and an open 1-evel space on which to pitch tho tent. The tent site should, if possible, be elevated above the surroundihg ground in order to obviate the danger of flooding in wet weather. The tent should be pitched to receive the morning sun, so that it will dry from the night dews as early as possible, and thus malce for easy packing. Onc of the signs of the really experienced camper is the care with which he stores his food out of the way of insects and animals. Sugar, salt, pepper and all dry stuffs should, as far as possible, be lcept in tins, to protect them from damp and from ants. Bread and cheese should be wrapped in a damp, clean cloth, and also put in a tin. Meat should be wrapped in muslin and then hung up in the shades of a tree out of the reach of animals. A little vinegar sprinkled on the muslin will protect it from fliee and insects. In hot weather butter can best be kept solid by floating the containing vessel in a bowl of water, and covering the smaller vessel with a piece of muslin which is allowed to dip into the water all round. The muslin soaks up the water and the evaporation from the muslin has a cooling-

i i effect. The water also acts as a j "moat" to lceep away creeping things. j The trench fire is, the most popular j type of fireplace, as it retains the j heat, saves fuel, protects the cook J from a good deal of the radiating | heat, and it burns much more steadily than an open gipsy fire. When moving camp every day thero is seldom time to malce elaborate trench fiireplaces, but just a simple narrow trench cut in the ground, with the sods removed to a safe distance. will protect the farmers' afield, and can speedily be filled in on leaving. A piece of advice: always replace the sods. A trench fire should never he used in ground consisting of pine needles, leaf mould, heather or other inflammable materials. The trench will fall in at the sides, and — what is much more serious — it will sometimes burn underground. On such soils the only safe way is to construct a hearth of bricks and stones, or to make a good thick flooring of sand on which to build the fire. Keep all the cooking pans and plates close together; arrange them neatly by the side of a wai) or in a kitchen-rack made by putting a few sticlcs in the ground. A cook's table can be made of an upturned box or a borrowed planlc resting on two logs.