How to lighten the load on a budget

[savvyninja]

that's good advice. It seems like the key to camping light is a willingness to rough it up a bit more than usual. No unnecessary gear. Just the essentials: water, food, flashlight, compass and a good utility watch.

[Newanderthal]

I don't see it as roughing it more than usual, just adjusting the idea of comfort. You spend all day backpacking under 50lbs of gear so that you can have the comforts. But it's hard to enjoy them when your back and feet hurt and you're exhausted, whereas I forgo a few extras and forgo the discomfort of lugging around all that weight.

I'm much more comfortable than my companions who have the luxuries.

[Theosus]

Originally Posted by WileECoyote

I HATE to carry heavy packs. I will do anything I can to get out of it. I carry only what is necessary and then some things I do without just because I don't want to carry it. I would much rather do without something than to carry all of that heavy junk around. You should have seen my wife when we went to Disney world of all places. She took a back pack with two or three cameras and a video camera. She was very sore the next day and made me carry it instead. I left half of it in the room and she never noticed.

I think I saw you, you might have made it on my "people of Disney world" blog entry. There were people with huge rolling backpacks and such. I took a lowepro compuday pro 250 - which is about the size of a school book bag. It held my SLR camera, spare battery and filter, the required ponchos for our group, drink powder things, and my water bottle. It wasn't bad and fit on every ride, even space mountain which is tight for my 6' 2, 210lb frame.
But anything bigger would have been too much.