I love camping and diving.
I had an annual dive camp party that I did for 12 years.
What started as a very simple spartan affair ended up as a full blown bash with 50 to 60 people in attendance. We ended up with a full blown gourmet commercial kitchen, proffesional chefs showing up, a tiki bar, seahunt movies at night projected on a white sheet that was hung on the side of a motorhome, commercial BBQ, it was crazy. It was a multi person effort to be able to pull it off but they were loads of fun.
Some tips I have from my experiences would include:
For cooking we used camp chef stoves available at Costco. They put out a huge amount of heat and require a 5 gal propane bottle but for preparing large amounts of food and using flat griddles nothing beats them.
Get lots of cutting boards and knives. I used to go to garage sales and find all my camping kitchen untencils including some of the best knives I own. I also found a bunch of stainless bowls at a salvage place. I always find stuff that is heavy duty and unbreakable for camping. I collected a whole series of cast iron skillets and also found a huge one (biggest they make). Wok pans are also great and they're cheap, I found some good ones at Wal Mart.
Get a couple huge boiling pots to heat water for dishes etc. we used rubbermain dish washing tubs and used the campsite table bench as the place to do dishes.
For wetsuits I made a PVC hanging rack that was colapsable, but later I found it easier to just keep using the wetsuit and gear continuosly the whole trip and just clean everything thoroughly when I got home. The secret is to dive so much that your gear never gets a chance to dry out and get crusty.
We ended up going to a campground for the last 4 years of the party that had water and power in every campsite. I always used a tent, and the nights on the coast can get really cold and damp even in the summer, the fog can roll in and it an be one drizzly miserable time if you're not ready for it. I finally got tired of freezing my ass at night so I went to West Marine and got one of their boat cabin heaters which are designed to leave on inside a boat for weeks at a time unattended, and they are totally safe. They are almost silent and have a thermostat so you can set the heat. I put one of those in my tent and was never toastier! I even left it on during the day and all my stuff stayed warm and dry, including the tent. Each site had a power post so I just ran a cord to my tent.
All our coolers had metal clasps and caribeeners or pad locks put on them due to marauding raccoons at night. All our food was purchased at Costco.
We bought all sorts of food like tri tip, ribs, chicken, all the breakfast food like lbs of bacon, sausage, eggs, pancakes, etc. you have to eat when you dive especially in cold water. And then there was all the seafood we got. The party actually centered around abalone diving and eating a lot of abalone. But there was always other stuff like scallops, rockfish, lingcod, crabs, urchins (uni), and other stuff.
Also a good supply of firewood is always nice. Just when you think you have enough bring some more. Firewood goes fast.
And last, bring some good bourbon to sip when you're around the fire at night.
Some of the best times in my life were dive campouts and sitting around the fire with friends after a day of diving.
.
