200 
FOREST AND STREAM 
May, 19221 ; 
AUTO-CAMPING CONVENIENCES j'; 
IF THE OUTFIT IS SELECTED WITH CARE AND DISCRIMINATION i ' 
THE CAMPER WILL HAVE FEW REGRETS WHILE ON THE TRAIL i 
A CONVENIENCE is 
something which, by 
its very nature, makes 
the task at hand 
easier, more comfortable to 
do, and accomplished more 
expeditiously than with some 
other device. Automobile 
camping is more comfortable 
and successful exactly in the 
ratio that real conveniences 
are selected. You can get 
along with makeshifts that 
at best are only contrivances 
to pull you through, but the 
auto-camper who has fewest 
regrets is the one who has 
selected his outfit thought- 
fully and carefully, because 
every item was convenient to 
the nth degree. 
Put in other words, this is 
just a way of saying that automobile 
camping is not “roughing it” for a mo- 
ment. Indeed, if you take a little care 
to select real conveniences you will live 
in just as comfortable circumstances, eat 
just as appetizing food, sleep just as rest- 
fully, enjoy just as ample protection 
from the elements as if you were living 
in a summer cottage in the mountains, 
instead of motor gypsying to the ends 
of the earth. 
If you have partly made up your mind 
that auto-camping is living on canned 
and powdered milk, eating salted and 
smoked meat and fish, trying to whet up 
an appetite on dehydrated fruit and vege- 
tables, then get over it. You eat on tour 
just exactly the same variety of food, 
with all the freshness and edibility that 
you would enjoy at home. 
This is possible because you take fresh, 
perishable food along on ice. If you use 
a camping trailer, or a camping-car body, 
then your outfit is provided with an ice- 
chest. Likely a great many more will camp 
with a car outfit, that is, with equipment 
selected part by part, piece by piece,_iteni 
by item, until you have the whole list of 
things needed for roadside housekeeping. 
And in this case you can carry your per- 
ishable food in a refrigerator basket. With 
a car outfit we place the refrigerator 
basket as a prime essential ; and I hasten 
to say that this is not the editorial ‘ we, 
but refers to my wife and our kiddies. 
We carry fresh cow’s milk all day in 
a car that is intensely hot. Likewise 
we take butter, hard and yellow and 
plump day after day in the brick, just 
as it comes golden and fresh from the 
crrocery. If we feel that after a long, 
hard day we should like the strength- 
giving power of a fresh-cut beefsteak, 
we put that in our refrigerator-basket 
and tour through August heat, knowing 
that it will come forth at the end of the 
day .sweet and ready to broil, with all 
its strengthening juices inside. And 
fresh fish can be carried several days 
right on ice, too. So can fresh fruit and 
ice-cold drinks. Last summer we auto- 
camped with a small babe, feeding on 
modified milk, thanks to our ice-basket. 
And we took ice cream with us for the 
noon meal in some hot glade along our 
route. If you believe in a kitchen ice- 
box at home, then don’t alter your habits 
in that respect when you go camping. We 
have never to date paid more than five 
cents for the little ice required to fill our 
basket each morning, or any time during 
the day when we passed through a town. 
T here is another convenience that 
makes eating and cooking along the 
road easy. This is our little running- 
board box, which clamps in place; size, 
9 X 9 x 33 inches. When we stop it is 
off in a twinkling, and is set up for a 
kitchen and dining-table that is 27 x 33 
inches, of regulation height, and has 
two shelves. More than that, this same 
box reveals inside a two-burner gasoline 
stove, a full set of cooking dishes, like 
two fry-pans with covers, coffee-pot with 
collapsing handle, three cooking pots 
with bails and covers, a folding oven, a 
covered food service of galvanized ma- 
terial, and several other things in the line 
of kitchen utensils. If you do not like 
the idea of sitting on the ground to eat, 
putting your stove on a stump, and cook- 
ing with a hodge-podge outfit collected 
from the kitchen cabinet, then let me rec- 
ommend this convenient running-board 
box. 
And speaking of cooking and eating 
conveniences, let me recommend an alum- 
inum outfit of these things if you have 
no other plans. Our aluminum set of 
dishes weighs less than 10 pounds, nests 
together so that it is about 10 inches 
high by 10 inches in diameter, and the 
complete set of thirty-five or thirty-six 
pieces goes inside a neat canvas carry- 
ing case. You have in this outfit two 
fry-pans with detachable I 
handles, four plates, four > i 
cups, four bowls, four knives, [ ( 
forks, spoons, tablespoons, a , ] 
coffee-pot, three cooking pots, | i 
salt and pepper service and a i ( 
few odds and ends. | 
One leads on naturally 
from the subject of eating ' 
and cooking conveniences to' ' 
stoves for auto-camping. For ( 
chilly nights and damp days, I 
indeed for general purposes, i 
the tent wood stove that col- | 
lapses and folds so compactly i 
that — in its leather case with : 
handle — it takes half the j i 
space of a suitcase, is indeed i i 
a convenience. Repeatedly i i 
we have kept our children I ; 
comfortable on foggy nights 
in river valleys and on, i 
snappy nights at high altitudes. In ali i 
motor-camping parks, with very few ex- i 
ceptions, we have found wood for fuel, 
state and federal lands where we have! 
camped have always yielded dead dry 
wood aplenty, and farmers have told us|i I 
to take what we wanted, so long as we 
didn’t cut anything alive in their woods.' , 
This collapsing wood stove conve- 
nience is not of the ancient vintage thatii 
warps, as there are anti-warping braces! 
inside, and it has a real bottom and de-|! 
tachable stove hearth so it will not set ' 
your floor on fire ; also four legs help 
about this matter. This is appreciated i 
when you are camping in grass. Be- 
sides, this stove has a lid of eight-inch 
diameter, a lid-lifter, 8 feet of pipe, twe 
elbows, a damper, a draft in the front 
and is a regular kitchen range of a camp 
stove. Its cooking top is 10 x 28 inches. 
Folded, with all the pipe telescoped and 
every item mentioned inside, this stove; 
carries in a canvas case 10 x 28 x ^ 
inches. 
Another type of stove that is ideal foi 
auto-camping in warm weather is the 
acetylene gas stove. This is specially t 
built for auto-camping, and you may i 
cook and illuminate your camp at the 
same time with it. The stove with thi: 1 
gas outfit can be hidden in a man’s hand i 
it is so small, and it weighs but a litth 
over a pound. The tank is 6 inches ii ' 
diameter by 20 inches high, and we carry 
ours under the rear seat or else just se 
it in the tonneau. The jet for lighting | 
camp is attached directly to the top o: j 
the tank, while the stove connects with' 
a tube. You do not generate your gas | 
but when your tank is empty refill tank: 
are available at any one of thousands o: ’ 
exchange stations. Gas is the instan 
fuel, the 100 per cent, fuel, and acetylem 
gas is certainly a convenient outfit in thi 
highest sense of the word, especially 
when you remember that you may cool 
and illuminate simultaneously. 
