Bringing wood or finding it

[Woodzie]

When I take my family camping now, we bring our wood. I bought a chord and 1/2 of wood last year. That is the only thing we use the wood for. It makes life so much easier. We use to trek through the woods finding old trees that had fallen down. You can do it that way, but it's a pain. My family would complain the whole time.


What do you do? Do you bring the wood in or find it around your campsite?

 

[jason]

You have to be careful. Some parks will not allow you to bring in your own firewood. It kind of stinks because I can get as much free firewood as I want through someone who owns a tree removal service. But I can understand, as you can bring in bugs that could endanger other trees.

 

[2coastcamper]

At most of the parks around here, there are bundles of wood for sale. When I'm camping with other people, I usually try to just get those as the money goes directly to the parks. Plus, they're real strict around here about disturbing the habitat. When I was at Gualala, they didn't even want people to pick up wood from dead and downed trees.

When I used to go to Goose Creek, however, they were fine with picking up sticks and downed branches. Since it was in hurricane country, there were always plenty of downed branches. I'd usually drag one to my campsite, and hatchet it up. That was usually enough for my firewood.

It usually ended up looking something like this:

 

[firefly]

We look for wood when we get there and sometimes buy some at the camp store. We also live in hurricane country so we have alot of dead trees and sticks laying around. But we have to have our fire contained. So we bring a big metal tub with us.

 

[Tomboy]

We've found it easier, and just less of a hassle in the long run, to buy our firewood on site. I don't want to have to think about bans and fines and what not as far as bringing wood in to the site. The kids will still gather twigs and sticks for kindling, but that's about it. They're really more interested in just getting the fire going than worrying about getting the wood.

 

[failghe]

I usually bring enough wood for a night. But sometimes it is easier to buy it at the campground. One local park has free wood in piles to use while staying there. The kids usually look for small branches that have fallen to throw in the fire or to use for marshmallows. If I have extra wood left over I stack it next to the fire pit for the next camper to use. I think they feel happy to find some ready to use. I know I would.

 

[atula]

I usually look for wood when we go camping....and it is not really hard to find in the area we usually go to.

 

[popupgirl]

Since we cut wood to sell and we also burn wood in our wood stove in the winter, we always take our own campfire wood. I can't imagine paying for it at the campground when we have it at home.
A lot of the campgrounds around me also say you can only bring in "local wood". We are local to every campground we camp at.
I also have a lot of family members that come and ask us for wood prior to camping. It's just something we always have. :tinysmile_fatgrin_t

 

[Paige]

We usually bring newspaper to start the fire and then just buy wood from where we're going. It's just easier to budget money for that as well as for other supplies we need when we get there. As a previous poster said, a lot of times where you are going won't allow you to bring in your own wood because of risk of disease or infestation.

 

[3ofusnow]

I had never thought about the risks of bugs to the live trees in the area. We usually take enough for one night and either buy or find the rest.

 

[Campy]

You're not allowed to bring wood into the state parks around here (Maryland)
an effort to stop the spread of the emerald ash borer . They want you to buy their wood. I don't have a problem with that, the money goes to the Park service. What I do have a problem with is when they have wet or green wood that just smokes or won't burn.... not fun. You are allowed to scavenge wood so we just send the kids out to collect it.

 

[campgirl]

We always take our own too. There are several places that sell wood at the campsites around here. We still take our own, it's just cheaper that way. We will go and pick up twigs and branches if we see them around, to use as fire starters.
I know some places (mostly state parks) won't let you bring in wood unless it's from somewhere local.