Arizona Board Games and Camping

https://discord.gg/H3skUfkvHE

Join us on our first camping & gaming trip of the season!

This will be heading up north to the Mogollon Rim on Thursday morning and staying through till Monday around lunch time. Check the meetup details at the top to see the exact dates. Feel free to join us for part of the trip or the whole 5 days.

We like to leave around 11am so we find our spot before 3pm so we have plenty of light to setup camp and of course this allows for...more gaming!

We will be sharing meal and clean up duties. You can read more about food and many more FAQs about how we camp here.

We won't know the exact spot we are camping at until we get up there, but we will make it super easy to find us! We will add a PIN to this description and will blast it out to you once we find the spot.

We hope you can join us as we head north for some camping and board games!

If you have questions, you can email us at susanlawver@gmail.com or post it on the discussion for this meetup.

When it gets closer to June, we will schedule a few virtual meetings where we can dial in the planning and you can get all your questions answered!

Cheers,

Susan, David, Shawn and Christine

We will add to this list as things come up that we want to everyone to be aware of. If you'd like something added to this list, please let us know in the comments and/or on the discord channel.

• Camp chair and/or gaming chair. (You can use the same chair for camping and gaming, but often camping chairs sit a little lower to the ground and they aren't great for playing games for hours. Costco chairs like this work just fine for gaming. A lot of us have a lot of extra folding chairs though, so please do not rush out and by one just yet.
• Tent — more info below!
• Sleeping bag, plus any pillows or extras you want. Some people like to bring an extra sleeping bag or quilt if they're sensitive to cold.
• Air mattress or sleeping pad (camping pad, yoga pad, etc). Depending on your tent size, you can often use a pretty awesome air mattress, no need to be uncomfortable. And don't worry about blowing it up, we have portable power to make inflation quick and painless.
• 5 gallons of water per person (for drinking, cooking, cleaning and putting out fires, etc). You can buy two 2.5 gallon water jugs from any grocery store.
• Lighting (headlamp, flashlight, lanterns, or whatever else works) and extra batteries. Headlamps are the bomb!
• If you own one of those 10x10 shade structures people use to tailgate with or use at kids' soccer games, please plan to bring it with you. These are great for protecting against sun and wind.

The Tent
Now to circle back to the tent... This is the only "specialized" camping equipment you really need for this type of trip.

Want to buy one? Big 5 has constant sales, and you can also get solid tents at stores like Target, Amazon, Costco, and Walmart. You can also find tents and sleeping bags at Goodwill or other thrift shops. REI (Recreational Equipment Inc) has quality gear, and you can often find virtually unused or returned tents in their sale section or online Outlet store. They also run 4 annual sales for members (you probably know one!).

Don't want to buy one? Your parents or friends or kids probably have one that is sitting in the garage that they'd love to lend you. (Please set it up once before the trip however. You don't want to get there and find out you don't have the poles you need or it has sun damage and so it's no longer waterproof. Ask us how we know this!)

Important: Do not spend a ton of money on a fancy tent if you haven't been camping before! You may not like it and then that is money down the drain. Many people start with a cheap or borrowed tent, figure out what they want, and then drop the money on what they want much later in their camping journey.

Food & Drinks
Bring an ice chest/cooler with drinks, any snacks you want to eat, and any food/meals you are making for the group. Ziplock bags are great for protecting anything that might get ruined if it gets wet.
We've spent a lot of time making sure our food stays chilled, so here are a few pro tips to help the ice in your cooler last:

• Buy blocks of ice, not cubes if possible. They last longer, and they're usually available at Water & Ice stores. You can even get block ice molds for your own freezer. If you have ice cubes though, you'll be just fine.
• Cool your cooler before you put your items in. We like to toss in some ice in the day before, then dump that ice and re-fill the cooler the day you leave.
• Cool your food and drinks before you put it in the cooler. Dropping warm soda in a cooler will shorten the ice's lifespan. You can even freeze water bottles or food (e.g. burgers, bacon) you won't eat on the first day.
• We try to keep our coolers out of the sun, and not leave lids open for long periods. It's like a fridge, it stays colder if you get what you need and shut it quickly.
• Note: You do not need a $500 Yeti for the kind of camping we do, so please save your money! We've made food last up to 6 days in a basic cooler, and we can go to the nearest town for fresh ice mid-trip if we need.

Group rule: Please do NOT bring drinks in cans or glass up to the Rim! Why? They spill easily (especially when it's windy) and more importantly they attract bees. Please buy bottles (no glass) with screw top lids for your refreshments. Trust us on this one, we spilled sodas over a few too many games until we wised up.

Kitchen Equipment
Since we can't always have a fire, due to fire restrictions, we already have a nice kitchen set up using propane. However, if we get 20+ people who all will want to eat at around the same time, we probably will need others to also bring up grills/camping stoves up. Once we have the group menu dialed in closer to the trip, we can figure out what is needed and go from there. There's no need to rush out and buy anything.

Clothing and Layers

• Temps can change quickly on the rim. We generally know what the weather will be like about a week before the trip so there's plenty of time to adjust before you pack. It gets hotter on the July and August trips than you would think, though there's usually a breeze and we bring shade structures, though it often gets into the 50s at night. That's why the key to camping clothes is LAYERS. It's great to add and remove layers as the temp goes up or down through a trip.
• You don't need outdoor clothes, bring whatever you're comfortable in! Shorts, pants, tights, jeans, sweatshirts, t-shirts... all of these are great camping clothes.
• Some things that are easy to forget: extra socks, a hat, and sunglasses
• If you plan to hike, please bring sturdy, closed toe boots.

Most of the gear and clothes is stuff you already own. Go simple and you will be fine. Civilization is close if needed.

Toiletries
Here's a basic list, but everyone is different.

• deodorant
• moisturizer
• toothbrush and toothpaste
• body wipes (and dry shampoo, for some) help to stay refreshed
• hand sanitizer
• sunscreen
• bug spray
• lip balm or skin cream, it gets dry!

Thought of something that's not on our list?
There are some important consumables (e.g. compostable trash bags, toilet paper, hand sanitizer) that we will be collecting money for and buying in bulk.

Beyond that, if we feel we need any equipment that we can't source from within the group, we will discuss what is needed and figure out how to acquire it.

Please do not rush out and buy anything at this time. We will discuss things as a group and assign folks to purchase what is needed.

Everyone will pitch in how it works best for them. Some would rather give money, others would rather go and be the person that finds, buys and hauls stuff up there. There are lots of ways to engage with these trips and provide value.

## Gear FAQs

Let's talk bathroom...
We bring up one of these. It works great. It's all very civilized. However, we realize if we get more than 12 folks coming on this trip, 1 of these may not be enough. However, please do not rush out and buy one. Someone in the group may already own one and is willing to bring it up to use.

How do we handle the trash?
We bring up several collapsible trash bins for both regular trash and recycle. This means we haul all of our trash back down to the valley and dispose of it there, as is good camping etiquette. If fires are permitted, we burn anything we can, but in the end, we'll be bringing some bags of trash and recycling back into civilization.

What about first aid?
We maintain and always bring a large first aid kit, but it never hurts to carry the medicines you like and may need.

Want a full list of camping "essentials"? No problem, but don't feel like you need to run out and buy all of this.
https://www.rei.com/learn/expert-advice/family-camping-checklist.html
https://www.virtualkamper.com/camping-checklist/
https://nwtripfinder.com/car-camping-checklist-2/

Wrap Up
We will host a Camping Q&A before each trip so everything will be dialed in and you will know exactly what you are responsible for. On these calls you can meet others attending, be social, and come and get any questions answered.

* Let me start by saying none of us are foodies and for the most part, we lean towards meat and potatoes as a group.
* We tried ham and cheese using those pie sticks like these. They ended up being more trouble than they were worth. One side would burn and stick, whereas the other side was under cooked. They don't pack well and were messy to clean up and honestly, I think we would have been just as happy with grilled cheese on the Blackstone. I'm sure with enough practice we would get better at using these, but with larger groups this is probably not ideal to try and cook an entire meal using them as we only have a few and so it would take a long time to make. There are better options.
* We've also found cooking from scratch while camping sometimes isn't worth the trouble. We love having baked potatoes for example, but we found they take a lot longer than one would think to cook in a fire, especially if they are on the bigger side. They were also fiddly as you had to try and open the tinfoil without burning your hands to try and gauge if they were done, and then when they weren't, you had to put them back in the fire. It sort of became someone's full time to job to sit and watch and rotate the potatoes. Which made gaming awkward during that time, as they couldn't really play a game while tending food in a fire. What we found worked much better was to cook the potatoes 90% of the way at home (either crockpot or microwave) and then just heat them up and serve once we were ready to eat.
* We tried cooking steaks once and that is something we probably won't go for again. For starters they can be pricey and everyone seems to want them a different temperature and a campsite isn't quite like cooking at home, so it ended up being somewhat stressful. I would say the juice wasn't worth the squeeze.
* Bringing plastic plates and metal utensils that we would wash after every meal sounded good on paper, but in reality wasn't super fun. It meant even if we had a super simple meal planned, we were always having to wash some dishes. We soon switched to paper plates and plastic utensils and haven't looked back. Especially if fires were allowed, we could just burn the plates and bowls and call it good.
* We tried a few campfire desserts with middling results. I've yet to be blown away by any desserts we've made, except the smores. Those always rock.
* Before we got more diligent about using a checklist we went camping with no butter and no sour cream. Imagine baked potatoes with no butter or sour cream?! Ya, no. Don't recommend 1/5 stars.

**So what has worked?**

* Making sure the first night's meal is super easy. It can be tiring packing up, driving up to the rim, unloading and setting up camp. No one wants to spend an hour cooking food when we are just hungry and want to eat so we can get to the fun part - the games.
* So we either do something super simple like hot dogs on the grill or we bring something up from Phoenix that just needs to be reheated. With 20+ of us to feed, probably cooking something simple is the way to go, but we will discuss this as the events get closer.
* To make breakfast easier, we pre-batch the French toast batter at home, so the we can get that going super quick in the mornings and there isn't a lot of fuss or a lot to clean up. Noticing a trend here?
* Lasagna in the Dutch oven or our camp stove has been surprisingly good.
* We try and buy fresh corn on the cob to grill or fire so we can pretend we are eating healthy.
* Pre-making foods that are ready to eat works out great. David and I make some ham sandwiches we keep in the cooler before we leave Phoenix. This allows us get something in our system if we feel like we are low on energy or if what the group is having isn't our vibe. Having food at the ready like that makes things super flexible for us as sometimes you just get hungry and dinner isn't for another 2 hours but you don't want snacks.
* Shawn likes to bring up some cheese and cold cuts that he can snack on if dinner is taking too long or if he gets hungry mid-day.

**Sample meal plan would look something like this...**

* Thursday breakfast & lunch: On your own
* Thursday night: Hot Dogs and chips
* Friday breakfast: Bacon & eggs

• Note: We almost always have a pot of coffee going in the morning.

* Friday lunch: on your own
* Friday Dinner: Baked potatoes with BBQ and grilled corn
* Sat breakfast: French toast and sausage links
* Sat Lunch: On your own
* Sat Dinner: Lasagna and garlic bread
* Sun breakfast: if we are heading out Sunday, we do not cook in the morning and instead everyone is on their own and/or we can heat up leftovers.
If we aren't leaving Sunday, we will sometimes skip breakfast if no one feels like cooking but more often than not, it's more of the same breakfast foods. May sound a tad boring, but we do try and keep things on the simpler side.
Sunday Dinner: is pretty much always, "What do we have leftover that we want to use up?" Whether that's sandwiches, or leftover lasagna, the night before we pack up we try and not have a big meal planned that needs a lot of cooking, as there is always a lot of stuff to do to get ready to leave the next day and often we breakdown the grill the night before we leave, although not always.

The morning of the last day, we do not rush out of camp. We generally spend the morning packing up our tents and kitchen stuff and leave the bathroom and shade structures for last. We are usually on the road by noon, sometimes 1pm as we try and beat some of the traffic heading back into the valley. It's perfectly okay to leave earlier if you want to get back earlier.

If the weather was poor (rarely happens, but has), sometimes as a group we just want to call it, so we pack up and head out fairly early.

**What we are thinking could work well with a larger group...**

* Assuming there are ~20+ of us going, there are 5 major meals that need to be prepped, cooked and cleaned up from. If each of us are assigned once to cooking duties, and once or twice to clean up duties that could work out really nicely. Obviously due to dietary restrictions it may not work out that cleanly, but just to start to put a plan together, it could work something like this:
* If you volunteer for a meal, say hot dogs and chips, we would probably need, I'm guesstimating, 45 hot dogs to be purchased, along with buns, ketchup, mustard, white onion, relish and chips. The leftover chips could then be used as snacks through out the weekend.
* If you were assigned burgers, it would be very much the same, just with burgers instead of hot dogs. And maybe since burger meat is more expensive, we assign 3 people to help split the cost of the more expensive meals.
* Breakfasts are easy, eggs and bacon - 4 dozen eggs and 4 packages of bacon should do it so splitting that between 2 people seems very doable.
* If someone really doesn't want to help cook (I get it), they can volunteer for clean up duty and/or pitch in some extra money to whom they are assigned with.

We've been asked if alcohol is allowed? Generally speaking, we do not drink during our camping weekends. If it's particularly cold, someone might throw some peppermint Schnaps into the gear for hot chocolate. We aren't anti-alcohol or anything like that, but we want to keep these trips focused on the games so we ask that you do not bring up alcohol.

We don't have the meals planned yet and I would imagine we will experiment with some new meals going forward, so if none of the above appeals to you, we are open to changing things up. This is just what has worked for us.

We probably should lean in on being more healthy, so if you have something to bring/share that is easy to transport and isn't a hassle to make, we are all ears.

We will work on a sign-up sheet for the meals, once we've landed on them, so people get to help with the meals they are most excited about.

As long as everyone is willing to help, I'm sure no one will go to bed hungry and as a group we will get better each time and I look forward to getting to try some new foods!

P.S. Like any game meetup, we just ask that you be sensitive with food and drinks around the games!