Help! Flying out west - how do we ship/transport camping gear
 

Flying into Denver, the region between Southern Colorado & the South Rim of the Grand Canyon. Trip will occur June 2006 and include two adults & two preteens. We will rent a car & camp. The problem is getting our camping gear from the East Coast to Denver. Is it possible to ship it? If so, where do we send it?

If you select a freight company like FEDEX or UPS, on the manifest you can select to have the packages held at the carrier's depot for pickup. I would select a freight company that has a depot either at or very near to the airport you are flying into and has flexible pickup hours for your arrival. The same would be true for the return of your equipment, however, you can have it shipped to your home or office. Select a freight company that has online tracking.

Also, I believe that you can have the freight shipped to a Kinko's that has FEDEX capabilities.

One thing I learned recently...don't try to ship a camp stove if it has any fuel or even the smell of fuel in it.

We shipped our camping gear to Yellowstone as luggage through the airport and it arrived safe and sound. But it was only two tents, sleeping bags, and a lantern, no cooking items.

Is there a reason you want to ship, rather than just check the items? With the exception of the camp stove and fuel, I can't really think of much that you couldn't check on the airline.

If you have a camp stove where you put fuel into a reservoir and you've actually used it before, you probably won't be able to check it or ship it (unless you do ground shipping). If you have the type that uses an external fuel container, the stove itself shouldn't be a problem.

We had a very unfortunate experience recently where we told everyone we could (TSA, desk agents, etc.) that we had packed and empty campstove. It was still confiscated and we weren't told it was taken. We didn't actually discover it until we were at backpackers camp at 7:30 pm at Yosemite. It was interesting trying to buy a new one at that point!

I guess my parting advice is to thoroughly check all of your equipment upon arrival! Would have saved us a big headache :)

It looks like you've gotten some good advice on shipping. I just wanted to throw in my two cents about checking camping gear. It's doable - especially since each person can check two bags. We flew to CA one year to camp Yosemite. We made sure to pack just essentials and planned to fix things we could easily prepare without a stove at camp. We have an over-the-fire cooker for things like hot dogs, burgers, etc, which worked well for us.

Consider buying cheap gear at Target, K-Mart and other similar stores. You can get camping and cooking gear for a total of $300 or so, and considering what you will save in motels and restaurant costs, it will pay for itself and a couple of days. Or take only your sleeping bags and tent(s) on the plane and buy the cooking items when you get there.

check out this thread on missing camp stove:
http://www.fodors.com/forums/pgMessa...p;tid=34644288

(I think its op is "TravelingMom" who already posted here.)

I've been able to ship bicycles & equipment to bicycle shops. Would the first campground you plan on visiting accept delivery?

We have done numerous camping trips on fly/drive style vactions and check our items on the plane. We (family of three) pack lightweight backpacking, non-bulky mummy-style sleeping bags, nylon 4-man, 3-season tent, a topsheet, my down pillow (goes with me everywhere) and a couple toss pillows (for hubby and son), packbacker's style 3/4 lengh campmats, our groundcloth for the tent, one-burner campstove without the fuel, (We buy the fuel cannister upon arrival.) and essential (for us) cooking utensils, hubby's boyscout cooking kit, 12-inch non-stick pan and smallish 1 quart pot. We really par things down and plan meals so we don't mess with an ice chest. We also pack a couple of flashlights, back-up batteries, a bit of rope and other essential camping goodies. All of our camping gear can fit in one duffle bag.

When we arrive at the destination, we buy groceries and head to on our merry way. Now, after reading the post about the confiscated camp stove, I suppose we'll have to add checking to make sure we still have out camp-stove before heading out to the woods. Ours is a very inexpensive model and would be no terrible loss... but it would be a yucky discovery to find it missing after setting up camp and starting to cook dinner.

Sharon

UPS used to offer a service to ship items to yourself and you pick them up at thier site. I shipped lots of camping gear to SF including roof top carrier...and picked it up at their depot. The only issue was total cost. Make sure you know where you will get boxes/materials for the return shippment and if you do ship note down tracking number with contents as I had one item lost for a while and didnt know what was inside.

I would find out the maximum you can check on your flight. With 4 people it seems you could divide up the gear into large duffles and take them as luggage. With the exception of the stove situation, as others have mentioned solutions for above.

Thanks for all the input. We may actually be able to check it all since there are 4 of us.
Our camp stove does use an external propane cylinder, so we should be able to check it.