I'm also getting back into camping, thanks to my son and the Cub Scouts. There are several items I refuse to go without.

1. A 5 gallon bucket with lid and a 1-2 inch hole cut in the lid. It's a good place to put the errant bits of trash that can accumulate at a campsite until you can take them to a dumpster. It doesn't rip or blow away and makes a decent camp chair.

2. I also take my Timberland clogs. They are leather, closed toe, have a good tread on the bottom and are easier to slip on than hiking boots. All these qualities make them very useful for that midnight trek to the can.

3. Something for my son to do during idle time at camp (like cooking). For us, I take a boot lace or a 2-3 foot length of paracord to teach my son knots that he can pass the time practicing.

I love the cast iron pie molds. I love the cherry filled pies we always made.

Cabela's has great stainless steel campfire coffee pots - the percolator kind. So good that I often use it to make coffee at home on the stove.

I like the short "t-handle" shovels. they are a more solid, rigid step up from the miltary style "m-tools" and can be used for anything to digging up earthworms, making a john, or spreading coals and other things they are handy for. A medium sized "coffee can" for boiling water, to cooking or drinking. They can be used once and thrown away, or washed and re-used. Not to mention that they come with a free meal most of the time, and they are light!

As long as I have my Leatherman, Im ok.

candles

No problem Scoot in Ohio, I love them and I am trying to get my wife to buy one and try them.

toilet paper, bug spray, hatchet, rain poncho cause it always rains when I go camping.

scott,
It's a glass pot with a strainer inside, up top. You put the coffee in the strainer and fill the pot up with water. You boil it over the fire and viola! You got coffee. Haven't seen that thing in years but we used to use it when i was younger, and camping was roughing it a bit more than now. I think that pot is a decoration somewhere now (antique?) at camp maybe.

gotta have my Lodge camp style dutch oven.

I prefer a cast iron griddle for my camp. I can cook everything at once, but still keep everything separate - so I don't have a "scramble" for EVERY meal! Leathermans are overrated - just carry a solid knife and know what you can do with it. For coffee, don't count out the percolator.

Need recipes? Check out Cooked Animals: Recipes for Wild Game (http://www.cookedanimals.blogspot.com)

Simple as it sounds, camp needs a gun rack. Otherwise, shotguns, rifles and ammo spread out from front door to back and everywhere
in between.

From various lessons, you just can't have enough light-producing devices (any kind). Plus a few Bic lighters.

a pair of those cast iron cooking gloves are great thing to have

I pulled out a old book copywrite from 1917 by Horace Kephart "Camping and Woodcraft" .This man lived in the wilds and wrote about it. He was named the Dean of woodcraft by the boy scouts of america.Great book with valuable information