First Camping Gear

I was watching a show last night and the couple was talking about how when they first got married, they couldn't afford quality camping gear, except for the Coleman two mantle lantern. The lantern was a late 90's version. It was still going strong.

That got me thinking about my first gear. The first two pieces I bought were a Coleman 220 Lantern and a Coleman 425 Stove. The big discount store "Goldd Circle" was right next to where we were building an apartment complex, and I bought many things a 18-year-old needed for the enjoyment of life at that store. Around the 4th of July the had a big promotion on camping gear, and I bought the stove and lantern for $18.88 each. Along with fuel and a plastic cooler ($4.00).

The cooler lasted about 15 years. It wasn't much more than a waterproof plastic box and 20 pounds of ice didn't last more than two days. The stove and lantern have lasted through 50 years of camping.

I made $1.44 an hour. Those items were basically 13 hours each! Before I retired, I made $45 an hour! At that rate those items would cost $535 each today!

What would I recommend to my 18-year-old granddaughter graduating High School this year? Buy a high-quality lantern and two burner stove, they will serve you well, the rest of your life! As for fuel type? I still think Coleman Fuel (White Gas/distilled naphtha) is the best choice for durability and availability.

Over the past 50 years I have gone camping around 500 times, but the stove and lantern have been put into service about 3 times that often. Mostly power outages, and outdoor parties. As I count all the stoves and lantern I have accumulated (including small backpack verities) I have about 9 stoves (down from 16) and 8 lanterns (down from 11 or 12). I used to help outfit people from church for an annual campout. So, I had acquired a mountain of used gear. In those 30 some campouts, I never once loaned out my first stove and lantern!

The next piece of gear I bought and still have is a cooking grate. The legs fold up. I spent $21 at the Boy Scout Department of what is now a Macy's. You can go to Walmart now and get a similar one for $15-20. Mine has lasted 49 years. I've seen the Walmart quality ones fail the first time someone put a 5-gallon pot on to boil! (They get soft from too big of fire and collapse from the weight!) Maybe mine has been abused less, maybe not! Teenagers do get carried away.

The fourth piece of gear That has lasted is a cooler. We were on our honeymoon, and I went in a K-Mart in Flint, Michigan and spent $19.79 on a "Steel Belted" Coleman Cooler. That was May 1978, and it is still going strong, but has had a few replacement latches.

The piece of advice I tell the grandkids is: Buy once, Cry once! Also buy a cooler big enough to store your stove, lantern, and cook kit in. Coolers are like a gun safe, you always need more space.

What other brands or items of gear hold up to long term family camping?

Ivan

I see a graduation present of a big Yeti Cooler with a cook top stove, a lantern, and a bunch of gas cans stuffed inside. She will be thrilled.

Narragansett said:

I see a graduation present of a big Yeti Cooler with a cook top stove, a lantern, and a bunch of gas cans stuffed inside. She will be thrilled.

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She'll get some of that, but she doesn't camp. Her mom is afraid of the woods! I guess I'm kind of embarrassed that of 9 grandkids, the oldest won't step in the woods. I guess the swamps of Louisiana scared her off.

Ivan

..I've still got my stove and lantern from the 1970s....

SuperMan said:

..I've still got my stove and lantern from the 1970s....

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How often do you use them these days?

Asking the Forum about any product that will hold up well will generate anecdotes about purchases made so long ago that comparing them to today's offerings doesn't always work. Is the two burner white gas Coleman found today comparable to the one my my father bought in '68 and I still use a dozen times a year? I'll never know because the only repair I've made on the stove is replacing the leather pump cup.
If I was to gift someone a starter piece of equipment I'd go with a backpacker stove along with extra fuel canisters, a 1 qt. pot and small coffee percolator. I have an MSR but I've seen and heard good things about JetBoil. I still have a 55 year old Bluet (GAZ) that I would use but the canisters with their proprietary threads are no longer produced.

Ivan the Butcher said:

She'll get some of that, but she doesn't camp. Her mom is afraid of the woods! I guess I'm kind of embarrassed that of 9 grandkids, the oldest won't step in the woods. I guess the swamps of Louisiana scared her off.

Ivan

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Well yeah, Swamp Ape and Skookum are a thing.

In 1978 my wife and I bought a small 3 man tent. We each had our own sleeping bags and each of us preferred what we had and disliked what the other one had. We borrowed stuff from family until the next year when we bought a Coleman 3 burner stove and a 2 mantle lantern.

The tent is long gone replaced at least 5 or 6 times. She has gone to electric lanterns, but we still have a two or three standard lanterns from yard sales.

gjgalligan said:

How often do you use them these days?

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One of these days I'm going to use the never-opened camping gear that the ex made me buy because the gear I already had wasn't luxurious enough. I honestly think that when it comes to outdoor gear less is more. Although I'm not as minimalist as my friend who swore that one day he'd hike the Grand Canyon rim-to-rim-to-rim with only a loincloth, a Bowie knife and a Big Gulp.

Back in the day, all my camping gear came from the local army-navy surplus store. Rusty mess kits, dented canteens, moth-eaten pup tents halves . . . all the good stuff. Except for the surplus powdered eggs. Those were not the good stuff.

We like to backpack camp in the mountains so all of that gear is very minimal size and weight. Have a trip booked in June to 11 mile State Park in Colorado camping at 8,600 feet where it will be a nice 45 degrees at night. I have a North Face 3 person tent that is pretty tight with the two of us and use Climate inflatable sleeping pads (with anything inflatable always have a backup) and 20 degree rated mummy sleeping bags. The stove is a tiny Coleman propane and we get water through our Life Straw. My loaded pack and M&P 10mm weighs 35 lbs and I definitely don't want any more weight at 66 years old. For car camping we have a Kelty 10x10 tent and use a queen size air bed(with backup) and have a small propane stove that works great. I have three small powerful LED lanterns that spreads out the light and I prefer that to one bigger lantern. I grew up with Coleman fuel lanterns and stoves and they definitely last but propane and batteries are much handier and less messy.

soFlaNative said:

Asking the Forum about any product that will hold up well will generate anecdotes about purchases made so long ago that comparing them to today's offerings doesn't always work. Is the two burner white gas Coleman found today comparable to the one my my father bought in '68 and I still use a dozen times a year? I'll never know because the only repair I've made on the stove is replacing the leather pump cup.
If I was to gift someone a starter piece of equipment I'd go with a backpacker stove along with extra fuel canisters, a 1 qt. pot and small coffee percolator. I have an MSR but I've seen and heard good things about JetBoil. I still have a 55 year old Bluet (GAZ) that I would use but the canisters with their proprietary threads are no longer produced.

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Funny you should ask! I have not only compared my 1974 stove to a 2006 stove, but also a 1956 stove, AND my Father-In-Law's Coleman stove that his dad bought and used almost daily on the Navada ranch in the 1920's and 30's.

They all will heat and boil water using Coleman fuel, the pump rebuild kits are close enough to each other to use the same seals (lengths are different.) The oldest generator is made to take apart and clean, and the thread pattern is different. All the others will use currently replaceable parts.

Lanterns are almost the same design except for generators. Everything post WWII (if made for Coleman fuel but not Kerosene or Gasoline) uses a currently available generator. Somewhere in the 20 the went from a loop generator to the straight generator. Before WWI they went from globes made from Mica to a form of glass and now unbranded Pyrex.

My F-I-L has a early 1960's "Steel Belted Coleman cooler that is so big it hold THREE 50-pound blocks of ice. With one block in the middle it lasts about 4 days, with a block on each end it lasts a week to 10 days (but you have to keep beer and soft drinks elsewhere so as to limit how many times you enter. Nobody admits to remembering the cost. But my estimation is it cost like a big Yeti in comparable wadges! (The wife's Aunt & Uncle have one too, bought at the same time. The Army used a similar design in the 50's) Now finding 50-pound block ice is almost impossible!

Ivan

I talked my dad into dropping me off at Brainard lake (10,000’) on the east side of the continental divide when I was 15 or 16 for a solo excursion over Arapaho pass (12,000’) and down the other side to monarch lake( 8300’) in early July.There were patches of snow still. I carried a cheap backpack,a cotton sleeping bag, canned food and a tube tent. It took 3 days and I froze both nights making a fire at first light. It was a hoot and I think ma wanted to kill us both lol (we didn’t tell her ahead of time ;-) my first purchase after that experience was an expensive down sleeping bag

Yes, I still have my Coleman stove and lantern but the best is this, plus it carries all your stuff!

When I first started camping, I didn't pay much attention to the gear. I was 2 weeks old my first camping trip. That put it at the beginning of March. By the mid '70s, when I was old enough to notice, we had some of our most indestructable gear.

Tent was a cabin tent from Sears. Never leaked and had a floor that was indestructable. We moved camp in a campground once by pulling the stakes and dragging the tent down the road to the new spot. Floor just laughed at us. Previous to that we had a canvas army tent. Heavy, hard to set up and black as sin inside.

We had a Coleman Lantern that was pre-war. Still have it around here somewhere. My father refused to get a propane lantern until the late '90s when my mom, who was scared to light a white gas lantern demanded one. She was scared to light the propane , too, but she would do it. The stove? Coleman 2 burner white gas. Around the time he got the propane lantern he got a propane stove and only used the white gas stove for casting lead.

Had a couple of the steel belted coolers. The latches always wore out. Dad fixed them a couple times each. They kept things cold, though.

Our most durable camping equipment was our water container. Cut down heavy stainless steel milk jug with a custom friction fit lid. Holds about 7-8 gallons. Still here somewhere.

Other stuff my dad made himself. Had a wooden folding table and four chairs he built. Plus we had one smaller folding chair that my grandfather made for my dad. Fit my narrow butt just fine.

Now my tent is nylon, my cooking and lighting fuel is propane. I have stoves that weigh less than 2 packs of smokes and are slightly smaller, too. I also have a steel two burner Camp Chef stove that's the center of my car camping kitchen. My lights range from double mantle white gas and propane lanterns to usb charged LED light strips. And I have a couple tarps that must be made from spider silk and badger's pubic hair as they only weigh about half of a late night deer camp chili fart.

I have camped all the way from wrapped in a tarp on the ground, with a head lamp and provisions consisting of a 6 pack of beer and 2 bags of chips augmented with beef jerky, all the way to camping with a '28 ft motorhome 3 pickups, a 14X20 canvas wall tent with wood stove 2- 3 family size dome tents and more lanterns, coolers and chairs than you can shake a stick at.

The old stuff was more durable, but the new stuff is generally easier to use. Some of it is cheaper, some of it is much more expensive. The thing is, there is a lot more companies producing a lot more camping gear. And you can order it online and have it shipped to your door overnight in some cases. With Covid, and social distancing, backpacking and camping exploded in popularity, as did the amount of gear being made.

We live in glorious times, folks. I for one am grateful.

In "Joe Verses the Volcano," Tom Hanks' character buys two all brass "Colman" lanterns. Those are actually by State Machine Products. The Army and the Ohio National Guard used to use that style. They will run on Regular & Unleaded, Coleman Fuel, and have been known to run on Bourbon or Vodka! SMP also made a single burner stove that was issued to Medics. I have one of those (same fuel requirements) and the Coleman Medic stove from the 1950's, They both use the same carry case/cook kit.

I was in my best friend's barn a week ago. He had 8 lanterns hanging from a beam. Most were by Coleman, one by SMP, and the other three were from Europe. All could run on Coleman fuel and use Coleman mantels.

I think I miscounted earlier on how many lanterns I have: 3 Coleman 220's, 1 Coleman Peak One Backpacking lantern, 2 SMP lantern 2 Coleman propane North Star, 1 Coleman "Deluxe" two mantle, and 2 "Candle Lanterns" for backpacking. That makes 11 (Not counting some old railroad lanterns I never used) I have a packing box or a Coleman plastic case for every lantern and buyout defunct sporting goods and hardware stores of all their spare parts, mantles and generators and keep a parts index that rivels a Colman Service Center!

The 2 North Star lanterns are propane, and I use a "Tree" on a 20-pound tank with a lantern on the top. I run a hose from one of the side ports to my Two Burner stoves and have an adapter, so I only use propane when Car Camping, and when we went through a 2-week power outage in 2004. After power was restored, the electric oven was shorted out and we couldn't get it fixed for 4 months. Not having to pump up the stove or lantern is such a relaxing joy!

Ivan

Has anyone ever experienced expired or otherwise bad Coleman fuel?
I have a couple cans given to me by a neighbor long gone, a leftover can from when my father passed in 2010 and an almost empty I bought can't remember when. At least a couple are 30+ years old, over the years I've used the least full and haven't opened a couple to see or smell. I've never experienced other than a clean burn while using.

Cheap camping gear - Well, I remember one deer hunting trip to northern Maine in Nov. during a particularly cold winter for a 2 week tent trip. Back about 1975 or so. Tired of sleeping on the ground like we usually did, I purchased an aluminum / web folding lawn chair. My two buddies did as well after seeing mine, though from a different store.

1st day, one of the guys lawn chair fell apart. The ground for him.

Second guys chair lasted 3 days. On the ground for him too. My chair was working fine, and I busted their chops.

Noticed mine was sagging by day 5, and I was on the ground by day 6. They had been cutting my webbing a little bit at a time till it gave out...

I still enjoy tent camping, but we had some brutal trips before upgrading our gear and accommodations.

The longest camping trip I have done is one month, while kayaking hidden lakes and beaver ponds, again up in Maine. The right gear makes all the difference.

Larry

soFlaNative said:

Has anyone ever experienced expired or otherwise bad Coleman fuel?.

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I have use several partial can that were at least 15 years old without problems. I had an unopened can that I owned for almost 20 years and it was very old stock when I bought it. It Worked fine.

My best friend was almost out of gas in 1976. He scrounged about half a gallon of gasoline and used most of a gallon of Coleman fuel. His car made it the 50 miles to the gas station. Don't know the actual mileage, but it had to be awesome!

Ivan

Growing up in Tulsa camping was a way of life every single summer I can remember. Sometimes we would camp for a couple of months straight at Ft. Gibson lake in the summer with other families and the husbands would commute back and forth to their jobs in Tulsa about 50 minutes away. My dad taught half the kids in the neighborhood how to water ski behind a 16 foot aluminum boat with an 18 hp Evinrude. I had a canvas 7x7 cabin tent and my parents slept in the back of a station wagon, and of course a Coleman stove and lantern, that's what everybody had back then. I remember eating a bunch catfish and crappie from a cast iron skillet and I didn't like to fish as much as everyone else and spent a lot of time on my gold Honda mini trail 70 and shot a ton of snakes with my Winchester target pellet pistol.

SOLD // Honda CT70 KO 1969 Candy Gold — FCM Enterprises, LLC

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