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10 Cool Camping Gear and Accessories You Need

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Mountain view from inside camping tent.
Dominik Jirovský / Unsplash

Whether you’re a first-time camper or a seasoned outdoor veteran, choosing the right camping gear for your trip can really make or break your experience. There are plenty of products that can enhance your next trip into the wilderness, check out our favorite innovative camping items.

Fragrance with Benefits

Fragrance with benefits mosquito repellent.
Image used with permission by copyright holder

We all hate mosquitos, but they seem to love humans. Fragrance with Benefits is taking a new approach to mosquito repellent. Fragrance with Benefits offers travel-sized aromatic perfumes, body creams, and shower gels with the added benefit of natural, insect repelling essential oils. The citrus-based fragrances are unisex and are a refreshing change compared to smelly repellents on the market.

Self-Cleaning Water Bottle

Self cleaning water bottle.
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Save time with this self-cleaning water bottle that cleans the inner surfaces of the bottle by neutralizing odor-causing bacteria and viruses. With just the touch of a button, the bottle self-cleans by activating every two hours to keep your bottle fresh and smelly-free. A double bonus is that it uses non-toxic mercury-free UV-C LED technology to sanitize the water in 60 seconds. The double-wall vacuum insulated, and stainless-steel bottle keeps your water cold for 24 hours and hot for 12.

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Wearable Sleeping Bag

Wearable sleeping bag.
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How convenient would it be to not have to deal with the mess of perfectly trying to pack your sleeping bag back into its bag? Or better yet not have to deal with getting out of your sleeping bag to face the cold? A wearable sleeping bag is the solution. With its unique bottom zipper, campers can just unzip the bottom to walk around or unzip the arm zippers to read or eat. The hoodie sleeping bag has a cotton stuffing that is lightweight and a polyester shell that keeps heat in and moisture out (it works in temperatures as low as 20 degrees). A bonus is that the sleeping bag is machine washable.

Pocket Shower

Portable camping pocket shower.
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This simple and easy-to-use shower has black fabric that soaks up the sun during the day, resulting in an 8-minute warm shower later. Just hang it off a branch and start cleansing. It has a contoured shower head and a twist mechanism for turning on and off the water flow. The shower zips into a pouch that measures 3 by 6 inches and weighs just 4.25 ounces.

Net Cocoon for Hammock

Net cocoon for hammock.
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This mosquito net cocoon is made for a bug-free sleeping experience because it completely encloses a hammock to protect sleepers from biting insects. The netting is so fine that it’s able to keep out the smallest of bugs including sand flies, fleas, gnats, mosquitos, midges, and no-see-ums. The cocoon comes with 100 inches of cord on each side to support the net and two sets of zippers for easy in and out access.

Smartphone Fish Finder

Fish finder for smartphones.
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The T-BOX (SP200) mounts onto a boat with access to a 12-volt power supply (not included). The SonarPhone turns your smartphone or tablet into a fully functional sonar system that uses Wi-Fi to transmit to your device. You don’t need cell phone coverage to use it, the SonarPhone works anywhere in the world. The SonarPhone creates its own Wi-Fi hotspot and you can share your signal with as many people as you wish. The software App is downloaded for free from the App Store and works with both Android and iOS systems. All SonarPhone T-BOXes come with a neoprene armband so you will always have easy access to your phone display.

Hand Crank Blender

A hand crank blender.
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Blend up tasty margaritas, healthy smoothies, protein shakes, sauces, pancake batter, and more without the need for an outlet. This compact hand crank blender weighs 4.7 pounds and can be taken anywhere.

Glow in the Dark Bocce Balls

Glow in the dark bocce ball set.
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Why not have some fun in the dark while on your camping adventure? This bocce ball set glows in the dark. No more having to go to sleep once the sun sets!

Multi-Tool Ax

Multi-tool axe.
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The handiest ax you’ll ever come across is right here! With 31 features, this multi-tool ax is ready for any situation, from chopping, clearing debris, demolition, and pounding in and removing tent stakes. Functions include a pry bar, seat belt cutter, hatchet blade, gas valve wrench, bottle opener, hardened steel glass breaker, and more. The survival ax is large enough to do damage yet compact to fit in the glove box or small bag.

Foldable Kayak

Foldable kayak.
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This is the lightest and most portable kayak you’ll ever experience. The Inlet folding kayak is quite frankly an origami kayak. It’s designed for flat water and is quick to assemble. The kayak is nine feet and weighs 20 pounds. It’s compact enough to store in your car trunk, and you can even check it on a plane!

Latifah Al-Hazza
Latifah Al-Hazza
Former Digital Trends Contributor

Latifah is an Emmy Award-Winning travel journalist and documentary filmmaker, as well as the Cofounder of Femscape Sojourns, a boutique women's travel company. A journalism graduate from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign and the University of Southern California (MS), her work can be found in Vogue, Harper's Bazaar, CNN Travel, The New York Times, INSIDER, Fodor's, Roadtrippers, Frommer’s Travel Guides, Reader’s Digest, World Travel Magazine and The Manual, to name a few. Latifah has been named one of Travel Massive's 100 Inspiring Women Travel Founders. Growing up living a bicultural lifestyle, between Kuwait and the United States, has always fueled Latifah's passion for exploration and cultural immersion. Please reach out to The Manual editorial staff with any questions or comments about Latifah’s work.

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Chop it! This lightweight camping hatchet is only $25 in a deal
Lexivon V14 lightweight camping hatchet deal man using on branches

Certain outdoor tools are just good to have around, and a hatchet is one of them. Whether for doing some yard work, chopping firewood, or clearing some trail brush, it's good to have a hatchet or hand axe with you. If you don't already own one, listen up, because we've found an excellent deal on a lightweight, ergonomic 14-inch camping hatchet. Normally $45, it's on sale today for $25, or $27 before you clip the on-page coupon. Altogether, the deal saves you $20. It comes with the durable hatchet, which has a heat-treated blade, and a protective carrying sheath. Lexivon, the brand behind the hatchet, also offers a wide variety of additional axe and hand-axe sizes if you want something a little bigger or smaller. There's a , too, but it's not on sale.

 
Why would anyone need to shop this Lexivon V14 camping hatchet deal?

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This Gosky spotting scope with tripod is $50 off today
Gosky spotting scope with tripod bundle deal

Camping, hiking, outdoor sports, sightseeing, bird watching, all of these outdoor activities essentially call for some form of observation or spotting. While you might be tempted to use a pair of binoculars, we have another suggestion for you, and it's part of an excellent deal, too. The Gosky spotting scope with a tripod offers variable 20x to 60x magnification with lens focusing to ensure you can better see whatever it is you want to peek at. More importantly, it's available in a bundle deal for $140, usually $190, saving you $50. It comes with an exceptional scope, a tripod for stability, a carrying bag, and a quick phone holder -- a digiscoping adapter that allows you to record what the scope is seeing. How wonderful is that?

 
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From Nikon to Bushnell: The 10 best golf rangefinders in 2024
best golf rangefinders garmin rangefinder in use

You're a golfer and you, to nobody's surprise, want to hit the ball in the hole. After months of getting in golf shape, you've perfected control of the muscles essential to your swing and practiced them again and again. Need 100 yards to the hole? You can hit exactly that within a 5% margin of error. But you don't need 100 yards. Or maybe you do. In fact, you don't know how far you are from the hole. If only you had a golf rangefinder to tell you how far it is away and how much slope you have to fight to get up to it.

The best golf rangefinders will help you in much the same way that a golf GPS can. They act like an informational gun, just point and shoot to learn how far away something is and possibly even learn how much slope you'll need to climb to get there. Where a GPS gives you a map of your surroundings — and, possibly, how far away something is and even slope based on GPS data if you're lucky — the rangefinder will give you a true-to-life look at the land as it is today. At least, as long as you can see the spot you want info on from your current vantage point. Oh, and they magnify, too, making them like sort of single-lensed binoculars for golf (monoculars?). As a result, some golfers like to use a rangefinder instead of a golf GPS, or even use the two in tandem. The following are the best golf rangefinders to help you settle in on your next 18, putting the perfect amount of power on each shot.
The best golf rangefinders in 2024

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