Preparing for a two-day drive to a state park campsite high in the mountains? You will probably take the car for a servicing or at least a tune-up and oil change. You pack the car and take off. But what about the gear? Did you give that essential equipment a good going over before you left?
 Often in our eagerness to get onto the road and to the campsite, we lose sight of the importance of a thorough pre-check of the gear we're going to take, assuming it is brand new out of the box or was put away properly last year. But things happen between camping trips. No pilot would fly his plane without a good pre-flight check, nor should you.
It pays to take out the tent and pitch it in the backyard or the living room. You can then check for tears or insect holes in the fabric, maybe even discover some patches of mildew that can be cleaned off. And despite your best intentions, you may have misplaced a tent pole or peg or two. The last thing you want is to have to jerry-rig a 21st century miracle fabric tent with some wooden stakes carved from a tree limb because you lost or left at home some of the tent equipment.
The same holds true for your all-important cooking implements. Check the nesting pots to make sure you have them all. Take a head count on your knives, forks and spoons. Cups and glasses, too. It pays to run them all through the dishwasher to get them truly clean before piling them into the car.
The sterno and the lanterns also need a checking. Check for battery life and replace weak batteries. (Carry an extra bulb or two as well.) And of course, don't forget to go through the First Aid kit. Quite often medications expire and/or lose their potency, so you'll want to replace them. Same goes for water purification tablets. And you may have used your last Band-Aid on a cut or scrape last year, and not bothered then to buy a new box.
For cleaning up you'll want to have a good supply of biodegradable soaps and toilet paper.
Camping is so much more fun and carefree when you know you got everything with you, and everything is in good working order.
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