After traveling the country for two years, we have learned a trick or two. Some people would say this isn’t a campfire hack, it’s down right cheating but guess what? I don’t care. We learned it after a nightmare of a day and have been using it ever since.
The Back Story
We had been on the road for almost 10 hours before we got to our destination in northern Louisiana. About 15 minutes from the campground, our phones started going of with tornado warnings and the sky got dark. REAL dark.
I put my foot to the floor to get there so I could the RV unhooked from the truck, and that’s what we did.
Dropped the feet, pulled the fifth wheel release and got back out of the woods so we could see the storm. Then the phones went off again with a warning we’ve never seen before, TORNADO IMMINENT TAKE SHELTER NOW.
We drove as fast as we could back to the biggest building we could remember passing, the local Walmart incase we needed to take shelter. Long story short, we stayed in the truck with the dog, figuring we would go inside if we needed too.
2 minutes later the sound of the torrential downpour was drown out be the sound of the freight train. People aren’t kidding when they say it. The sky turns green and you hear a train coming when the tornado is here.
It moved in so fast we didn’t even have time to run from the truck to the vestibule. We could only watch in horrified amazement as the funnel cloud circled overhead without touching down on us.
A few seconds later it was all over and the sun was shining as if nothing had happened, so we went inside, bought some fresh underwear, and headed back to see how the RV had fared.
Luck was on our side that day, and there was no damage to the RV, so we ran the slides out and finished setting up.
The Campfire Hack
I decided after the day we had I’m sitting next to the campfire with a glass of bourbon or three, no matter how wet the firewood is.
It wouldn’t lite worth a damn.
Then I remembered, I have a bag of easy light charcoal in the RV Basement.
I put the whole bag in the fire ring and lit it. I sipped my bourbon and watched the flames grown until the charcoal started to get those beautiful grey streaks in them. Few more sips of bourbon and the coals are starting to get red.
Now I started to throw the smaller piece of wood on, which smoked briefly then became that beautiful campfire flicker I was looking for with no smoke.
I threw a bunch more small pieces on and stoked up the flames even more, still no smoke.
I threw the soaking wet larger pieces on top, and a few brief wisps of steam evaporating from the wood, and they too became a beautiful campfire in the middle of the lake that was our campsite.
So guess what we NEVER travel without now? You guessed it. Easy Light Charcoal. That’s the secret.
While everyone else is playing musical chairs trying to get away from the campfire smoke that comes from the “seasoned firewood” they sell at all the campgrounds, you can sit and relax making your smores.
