Campfire Convos S1E10 | ChatGPT Q&A & Favorite Camping Memories
from skunk standoffs to questioning my life choices in the rain
Originally posted on March 30th, 2025
Welcome to another episode of Campfire Convos!
In this episode, In this episode, we celebrate our 10th episode with a special solo format. With a scheduling change forcing me to pivot, I answer five ChatGPT-generated questions about my camping journey—from earliest memories to favorite gear and most memorable experiences. Join me around the Solo Stove as I reflect on what camping means to me and share my number one piece of advice for anyone just starting their outdoor adventures.
Featured Guest: Solo episode with Mitch
Episode Highlights:
My earliest camping memory involving a skunk encounter and how my parents inspired my love for the outdoors
The story of my dad falling into a lake while fishing and how it became a memorable family moment
How an Outsiders Together event in Ohio completely changed the trajectory of my life
My top three must-have camping items: Solo Stove*, Click Chair*, and coffee setup
Why the best camping advice is simple: just start camping with what you have and figure out your preferences as you go
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Full Episode Transcript:
Mitch: What's up guys and welcome back to Campfire Convos! Today's episode's a little bit special because it is our 10th episode and it's going to be a little bit different and we'll get into exactly how and why in a second.
But before we get into that, we are sitting on a Cliq Chair today and sitting around the Solo Stove Ranger. This podcast is not sponsored by any companies yet, but if you do purchase one of these items using the affiliate links in the description, it does help support the channel. We will get a small percentage of those sales, so if you like either of these and you want to buy them anyways, if you could use the link that would be much appreciated.
So today's episode's going to be a little bit different. I actually had some scheduling trouble with today's guest and they weren't able to make it in time for the podcast to be released when it's supposed to, and I have an every other week schedule that I've been trying to stick to. Because it's episode 10, I didn't want to miss that schedule, so we're doing a little bit of a pivot and I'm going to be just talking to you guys.
But to just spin it up a little bit, I asked ChatGPT to write some questions for me that it thought would be good for the podcast. So it gave me five questions and I'm going to answer each of those in kind of a just normal storytelling format, I guess, and we'll kind of go from there. It's a mix of experiences and gear and stories, so hopefully it's something that you guys like.
It's something that I've been wanting to do. If you know me, I talk to ChatGPT a lot for a ton of different stuff, so I thought this might be an interesting thing to do just to mix in. So we are going to jump right into that.
The way that I did this is I just gave it all the information about the podcast and basically gave it some details of what we're trying to do and just all of the stuff. I talk to it all the time so it keeps track of the things that I do talk about in my other episodes.
The question that I asked was "Can you make me a list of five questions that would be good for today's podcast?" It said, "Absolutely, here are five questions you could explore."
The first question is, "What inspired you to start camping and how has your approach changed over time?"
I wouldn't necessarily say I was inspired to start camping. I actually grew up camping with my family, and it was just something that we did to get outside and kind of enjoy nature. It really started with fishing, actually. My dad used to take us fishing all the time, and my earliest memory of camping was actually a fishing trip.
We stayed pretty close to this lake and woke up really early in the morning. We're climbing out, we're kind of sneaking around trying not to wake my mom as we go out really early to fish. We get all of our stuff and we're unzipping the vestibule of the tent and my dad's like pulling it open and I'm going to step through, and I just freeze. There was a little skunk that was just walking maybe 15 feet away. I froze, my dad is kind of confused as to why, looks around, he freezes, and slowly zips the tent back up.
But it was just things like that that happened that really motivated me to get back into it after a while. So overall, just doing it with people that I care about and having so many memories around it, I think, is what has inspired me to continue to do it. But I definitely have to give full credit to my parents who always had us outside, whether it be fishing or playing catch or whatever it might be. We were always outside. Like any point of the day, you could find us outside getting dirty, climbing things, getting into trouble—not too much trouble, but usually some kind of trouble.
But yeah, so definitely have to give my parents credit for that. I mean, they inspire me in a million different ways, but definitely as far as camping goes, they're a very large portion of that.
I think that answered that whole question. I should have started a timer because it's just me today and I don't know how long this episode's going to be. Oh, the other part of that—how's it changed over time.
So starting out, it was, I don't want to say bare minimum, because we had tent and sleeping bags and all that stuff, but it was definitely like family camping. So we're all staying in a tent, and by the time that we got old enough that we would all camp separately, we didn't actually go camping that much. We did more like camper camping, so just take a trailer out, park it somewhere, and then we all had like our own little sleeping space inside.
So from the beginning when we were in tent family style, just kind of everyone in one room, to the camper, and then to now has changed a lot as well. If you follow the channel or any of my other content, you know that I have a rooftop tent and like a full Jeep setup, which is my go-to for pretty much anything camping now. So we went from kind of basic setups to a little bit more intricate setups.
I will actually circle back to that in a little bit for one of the other questions. I read the questions just to make sure that they made sense, but I didn't think of answers for them because I felt like that was kind of illegitimate. So bear with me as it kind of takes me a second to come up with some of these answers. Normally if I have someone else here, it's kind of easy to talk to them and give myself a little time to think, but I think it'll be fun to answer these.
But back on track—just the depth of gear that I've had has been a slow accumulation over a period of time, and it's definitely not necessary to do it any particular way. It's just whatever works for you in that time. So your approach is going to change, you'll change things that you like, you'll take things out. Like, stuff that I like, you might not like, so what works for me isn't going to work for everyone and vice versa.
Next question,"What's the most memorable experience you've had and what makes it stand out?"
Okay, so I told the skunk story. That was one of my earliest stories. But that same trip, just to add on, there was a long log that was down right on the edge of this pond—and I say pond, it's a lake, it's pretty big—and my dad always had this thing where he would try to get out as far as he could wherever on land. Like if it was a little peninsula, he would go out there. If there's a log that was down and it was somewhat sturdy, he would walk out on it.
Well, he walked down on this log this time and he's out there fishing, and I don't remember exactly how it happened, but I remember looking over, seeing my dad on the log, and then I think I was playing with my younger brother, and then I heard a splash. We both look over and dad's in the water. So he had stumbled a little bit, gone in, and all of his fishing stuff—like at that point you're fishing from the side, you're not in your waders and everything, he just had his vest on and normal clothes—so he's in the water and all of his stuff's everywhere. And we all thought it was hilarious, because, you know, when dad goes in the water, you got to laugh, right?
So that's definitely the earliest and most memorable experience that kind of kept me going into camping.
As far as other experiences, though, I don't even know if this really counts—no, I mean it counts as a camping experience. So for some of you watching, you will know this as well. I am part of a couple outdoor groups, and a few years ago I joined a new one. It's called Outsiders Together. It was called—it's been called a million different things, but as of now it's Outsiders Together.
My buddy and I had just broken up with our long-term girlfriends and we're basically looking for something to fill the summer with. My buddy's birthday was coming up and he said, "Hey, I want to go out and party basically. Can you figure out and make plans?" I'm like, "Yeah, I mean, yeah, I can do that. I can figure out, have something to do."
So when we first started talking about it, it's like, "Hey, let's go out in Pittsburgh, let's go out and basically just go to a bar or club." But I joined this group at the beginning of that year and I had seen an event that was posted that was kind of close, a couple hours away.
I called him up and I said, "Hey, what do you think about camping in the woods with a bunch of strangers for your birthday instead? Seems like it's going to be a little bit of a party, but I think it's going to be a cool experience." He was fully down. "Absolutely, let's do that instead." All right, sweet.
So we pack up the Jeep with pretty much everything you could possibly need to camp—canopies and extra tables and giant coolers and all of the stuff—and we drive a few hours to Ohio to Nelson Ledges. And it was the very first Outsiders event that I had ever been to, and it has definitely, no exaggeration, changed the trajectory of where I was going with my life.
I had always been outdoorsy, I had always liked to camp, but I had never been camping in like a big group like that. So when we got together, it was just a different experience. We had so much fun that weekend. We met so many new people. I want to say there was around 26 or 27 people who ended up going that weekend. I knew one buddy, Bryce, my friend from high school whose birthday it was, and we just went around and got in trouble for two days, barely slept, stayed up talking to a million different people, went tubing and cliff jumping, and cooked over the fire. Everyone's cooking for everyone, and we're just having fun in this random campground in the middle of Ohio.
Again, it was a pretty nice campground, but it's nothing overly special. It was just more so the people that were around us that made it so nice. So I definitely have to give credit to Nelson Ledges and Outsiders, and I believe—I don't know if she was the only organizer, but Kirsten, she was, as far as I know, the mastermind behind the entire event. She did an amazing job getting these people together. She did group meals, and she was just an absolute sweetheart and got everyone together and made sure we had a good time.
So that was one of my most memorable experiences overall and definitely one that has affected me and turned my life into this direction. So definitely giving that a lot of credit.
Okay, next question. "Can you share some of your must-have gear items and why they're essentials for you?"
So I would say my top three items that I like to take everywhere, and I'm probably going to get a lot of slack for at least one of these—probably two, actually—maybe all three, we'll see:
This Solo Stove—I bought it to do a comparison off of Facebook Marketplace. I would never pay full price for something—well, I eventually would like to pay full price for items that I want to do videos on, but I was just starting out. My very first video concept was comparing the Solo Stove to an Ozark Trail smokeless fire pit, and I had bought this thinking that the Ozark Trails was going to kind of compete with it.
Spoiler alert, if you haven't seen my other videos, you should definitely go watch them, just cause, but the Solo Stove is awesome. It's so convenient to have. You can do so much stuff with it that you can't do if you don't have like a mobile fire pit. And now, you don't have to necessarily have the smokeless fire pit to do a lot of the things, but it does make it significantly more enjoyable and easier to use when it's all contained, pretty small. So a smokeless fire pit is definitely one of my top three items.
The Cliq Chair, which when I first got it, I absolutely hated it. There's a lot of movement in it, so even now, like you probably saw when I leaned back earlier, I kind of caught myself. It just takes a second to get used to. Once you're sitting in it and you're comfortable, it's very comfortable, but my thing that I like the most about it is it takes up such little space. I can throw it in my camera bag, I can throw it in the back of the Jeep. I have a couple of them I can throw in the back of the Jeep. They're so convenient to just take anywhere you go.
They're a little bit heavier, so I wouldn't say they're like a backpacking kind of thing, but definitely a good chair to have. They are a little pricier, which is why I don't know that most people would like it, because you can get the same basic thing done with a $10 chair from Walmart. But just how sleek it is, how comfortable it is, and how much it kind of just holds you is probably my favorite things.
And then the last item, or I guess little set of items, is like coffee making stuff. I really, really like having coffee, especially when I'm camping. To me, there's just nothing better than waking up early. You got the sun coming up, everything's like a little dewy, you might have a little fog on whatever body of water you're staying near, and making a good cup of coffee and just sitting there and enjoying it. It's my favorite thing.
So to do that, I have a little bit of a setup. It's something to boil water in—that's really all you need—and then I use an AeroPress. It has been the most consistent good coffee that I've made with all the different ways. I've done pour-overs, percolators—oh, I forget what they're called, like the little espresso coffee—moka pots, something like that. I've done a bunch of different ways, but the AeroPress has been consistently the best result.
So I guess if I'm picking one other item, it'd be the AeroPress and then something to boil water. But those aren't necessarily essential for anyone else, but for me to make my camping experience like peak enjoyableness, those are the things I like to bring.
I feel like that was a pretty quick answer for that one, so we'll move on to the next question. But I'm going to throw a little more wood on [the fire]. We're just going to throw that one in.
Next question is, "What are some unexpected challenges you face while camping and how did you overcome them?"
I'd say a solid 90% of unexpected challenges that present themselves while camping are weather related. The one that stands out the most is I went to an event last summer, the Mid-Atlantic Regional Overlanding Festival, which is basically just a big get-together of people who like to camp in their cars or on their cars or whatever. But basically, overlanding is just fancy camping where you go a little further in the woods. That's pretty much simplified as much as possible.
But the festival was a ton of people who like to do this stuff, and basically in a big field. So looking at the weather going in—like, before any trip I check the weather—but you can only be prepped so much by looking at weather, right? So if it says it's going to rain, you prepare for rain, but you don't necessarily know how bad it's going to rain. You can check some stuff, but that's pretty much the extent of it.
So this is like a Thursday through Sunday kind of thing, and Thursday and Friday are supposed to rain pretty much all day, but Saturday and Sunday were supposed to be a little scattered but really nice. So I decided to go anyways.
What I didn't consider was why it was raining, and it turned out that it was a hurricane that was coming up through the south of the US and basically going directly over where we were camping. So I mean, I knew it was going to rain, so I was prepared in that way, but tying everything down and making sure everything was actually nailed down wasn't something that I typically do.
Like, again, if you guys see my setup, I have an awning that folds out and then my tent, and normally the awning, I just put the legs down and just let it stand there. I don't really put the walls up or have to stake them down. But because it was going to be windy and rainy, I decided to kind of cinch everything how it's supposed to.
So I guess what I'm getting at is the little adjustments that you might have to make on the fly with your setup. So if it's a little extra windy, you might have to tie stuff down a little bit better. If you don't have a way to tie stuff down, you might have to get creative. So what I ended up using for the bottom of the walls on the awning were some of my camping bins and then just stacking like wood and whatever heavy stuff I had on it just to make sure it was sealed.
And then just kind of adjusting where you're going to sit, what you're going to do, making sure that you're in the right spot. So when I originally got there, I was kind of in like a little valley of a place, and because I was going there to essentially make content, I was thinking about like most practical place to put it for the content. But I actually had one of the guys come up and say, "Hey, we're supposed to get a good bit of rain and you're kind of setting up camp in like a little bit of a catch-all. You might want to consider moving somewhere else." And I'm like, "I can't believe I didn't think of that, thank you so much."
So he actually invited me over to camp with a group, which was amazing that he did because I ended up spending pretty much the entire weekend with an amazing group of people. But back to the setup, just being able to pay attention to what's around, knowing that, hey, if it's going to rain, don't be where the rain's going to go. If it's going to be windy, make sure your stuff's tied down. If it's going to be unexpectedly cold, make sure you have the right gear even if you don't plan on using it—taking it if you have the space, or making space for it so that you can camp safely.
Having a bad, uncomfortable experience is kind of type-two fun for a lot of people. So you go out, you're miserable with some of your friends, and you look back on it and you're like, "Oh, haha, yeah, can you remember that trip?" But for safety's aspect of that, you want to make sure that you're not in a situation where you're actually in danger of becoming really sick, hurt, hypothermic—anything that's going to be lasting badness. You want to make sure that you eliminate that as much as possible.
And then another thing is, especially if you have more expensive gear, you want to make sure you're taking care of it. So tying your awning down correctly so that it doesn't flip off your setup and rip or break—those are the things that you kind of have to adjust on the fly, and you might have to get creative in your way to do that.
So I think that answered the question in a kind of long, roundabout way.
Last question: "If you could give one piece of advice to someone new to camping, what would it be?"
This is probably the easiest question and something that I've talked about on a couple episodes with a few different people. The biggest piece of advice I can give you is to just go out and start camping. That's it. Go out and start camping.
You're going to change your setup, you're going to change the things you like, you're going to change the people you go with, you're going to change where you go—constantly. All of those things are going to change. But if you don't go out and start camping, you're never going to figure out what works for you.
So some people like tent camping exclusively, other people will only go camping if it's in an RV. You're going to have each person on the end of the spectrum yelling at each other that "that's not camping, this is the right way, this is the right way," whatever it's going to be. But you have to find where you fall in on that spectrum and perfect that for you. Don't tweak stuff because someone else thinks it's better. Try it out, see if it works for you, but you're definitely not stuck to any particular way.
I remember when I got back into camping a couple years ago, it was: "Hey, I'm taking out the bare minimum." So I'm taking comforters off of my bed, taking a mattress topper off of a storage mattress, throwing it in the back of my Jeep, throwing some pillows from my bed, and just taking what I have and using it.
Some people have the luxury—like, I was lucky enough that I had coolers for camping. I mean, they're coolers for anything, but you use them for camping. Tables to take out and set up stuff so if you don't have a picnic table, you have a table to play games or to cook food or do whatever. And having the mattress topper, that was making my experience a little comfier.
But if you literally just take out the blankets off of your bed, some pillows, throw them on the ground, you can have a good time. Now, those are when you want to make sure you have a little bit nicer weather and you know what's going on a little bit more. But you can make up for the lack of gear with being prepared to do whatever you got to do with what you do have. So if that's laying on the ground and not being under a tent, just make sure it's not going to be rainy.
And there's a million different scenarios where bare minimum gear can get you through if you have the right particular bare minimum items. So just figuring out what's going to work for you in that aspect and figuring out what you have as options is probably a good place to start. But just go out and camp.
If you can take a couple people with you, go out and figure it out together. If you are taking, let's say, you and four friends are going out camping for the very first time, there's a good chance that three of those four friends really don't like it, but you might have that one other friend who really does like it. Now take that one friend that you like, or that likes going also, and go camping again. And take maybe a couple more friends or just go to a place where you might meet some more people.
My favorite thing personally is the community that kind of comes from it. The people that go camping seem to be a special kind of people who are just easier to get along with and easier to be around. But I do know there's a lot of people out there that don't like to be around people when camping, and their whole thing is, "I'm going camping to get away from everyone." So you kind of balance that in a way.
But again, that's personal preference, and you're not going to figure out what your personal preference is if you don't go out and try it. So maybe go out by yourself first, go out with a small group first—whatever your preference is, try it and see what you like. Take parts of that and leave other parts, and eventually you'll piece together your perfect camping experience and it can be a lot of fun.
But that is all I got. I do—I'm not sure how long we've been going, but I think I'm going to ask ChatGPT for one more question to end the episode and see what it gives us if I have enough service.
"Can you give me one final question to end the episode on?"
"Sure! How about: What does camping mean to you personally and how has it shaped who you are today? That could be a nice reflective wrap-up."
So what does camping mean to me personally and how does it shape who I am today?
So to me, camping is just—and again, this is my answer, not for everyone, I get that—but being in nature with people that I care about and enjoying all of the little things. And the enjoying all of the little things is probably the thing in my everyday life that it's helping me with the most.
When you can go out and sit outside around a campfire and do absolutely nothing else but enjoy what's around you, it makes everything else seem even more enjoyable. So if I can sit here for hours and do nothing, then when I go out and do something that's different or exciting, it makes it just a little bit better.
And sharing that experience with other people, for me, also makes it significantly better. So I could sit here and look at this fire for an hour, maybe two, but if you put someone next to me and we're sitting here and just BSing, I can talk literally all day, which you guys have probably figured out by now. And all of my friends definitely know, like, I'll talk about anything. I don't care if I'm familiar with it—if I'm not, I like to ask questions, I like to learn new things, I like to have my perspectives challenged, and all of those things happen when I'm camping with my friends or new people.
It's hard to put into words exactly how it affects you, but life happens fast. So for something that can come along and slow it down and be enjoyable—it's kind of rare to happen for a lot of people. But for me in particular, slowing down was never really a thing. I was always trying to go faster, trying to get more stuff done, trying to get to the next crazy place.
But I'm sitting in a place where I've sat I don't even know how many times, looking at pretty much the same stuff, but I'm hearing different things all around. I'm hearing different birds. I'm hearing some—I don't know if you guys can hear it or not in the background, but there's some animal squawking not too far away. But it's the same but it's different every time, and being able to enjoy those little changes and adjust to them has definitely been something that's enjoyable for me.
So that's all I got for today. I hope you guys like this. If you did, I'd really appreciate some feedback. I don't know, it's definitely getting to be challenging to get different people on the podcast here and not do too many repetitive topics or people, so mixing in some solo things might be something I try to do here.
But I would love your feedback if you like the solo, if you prefer the actual conversation stuff. Do you like the stories? Do you like the tips? What do you guys want more of? Because at the end of the day, I really enjoy doing this, but I do want to make sure that I bring value to you guys, whether it be entertainment or information. But whatever you guys are looking for, I would like to know more about that.
So I really appreciate you bearing with me today and sticking it out to this point if you've made it this far. I feel like now is when I'm supposed to ask for you to share and comment and do all the cool stuff, and if you'd like to do that, I would really appreciate it.
But if not, I still appreciate you, and until next time…
peace!
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🔮 What's Coming Next
In our next episode, I wrap up Season 1 with reflections on our campfire journey so far. I'll share what surprised me most, from the unexpected support to recurring themes like "everything happens for a reason" that appeared across multiple conversations.
I'll discuss why our unscripted format brings authenticity, and reveal plans for Season 2 including a new schedule and the more vulnerable conversations I hope to have. Join me for one last fireside chat before we take a short break to regroup and return stronger 🔥
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