Checklist for RV Camping We Love
This is not my first-rodeo list. My first RV trip I packed like the world was ending and still forgot the sewer hose, which is a fun thing to discover at a dump station in Cedar Bluff with three rigs waiting behind you.
Now it is year four. Same beat-up 24-foot travel trailer, same routine. I run the same checklist before every trip, the boring repeatable one, and the magic is that it is boring. Hitch, tires, gray tank, propane off. I do it half asleep at 6am with coffee in one hand. My partner Reema reads it out, I confirm, we leave.
The lists below are the ones I keep printed and pinned by the door, all sold as digital files at an indie shop, so if a link sends me a few cents I will not pretend to be sad about it. These are the repeat-trip ones, not the panicked first-timer kind.
The One Bundle That Lives Taped Inside My Door
I went through a phase of writing my own list on a legal pad before every trip. Lost it twice. This bundle ended that. It has the breakdown I actually use, kitchen, exterior, hookups, the stuff you only remember after you have forgotten it once.
I print mine on regular paper, then run it through a cheap pouch laminator I got for maybe 20 bucks. Dry-erase marker, cross off, wipe, reuse. After our trip to Cedar Bluff the lamination corner started bubbling because I packed it next to a wet towel. My fault.
One nitpick. There are more pages than one household needs, so I only printed the three that matter to me and recycled the rest. Not wasteful if you choose.
Where I Write Down Which Site Number Did Not Suck
A checklist tells you what to bring. This planner tells you what went wrong last time so you do not repeat it. That is the part I needed by year two.
I keep a single line per trip. Ouray, site 14, too close to the bathrooms, never again. Reema thinks it is overkill. Then she asks me which campground had the good shade and I open the planner and she goes quiet.
It is a heavier print, so I did this one at a Staples on cardstock and spiral bound it for a couple dollars. Home printer ate the first copy at page six. The thicker paper jammed.
The Version For When The Kids Come Too
My sister borrows our trailer in August with her two boys, and a solo planner does not cut it for four people. This one has the family-scaled pages, more meal lines, more who-packed-what.
She is the type to forget one kid’s inhaler and remember the other kid’s third stuffed animal. The packing grid in here saved that exact situation before a trip to the dunes near Mosca.
The meal-planning section assumes you cook more than we do. Half those rows stay blank for us. I do not mind blank rows, but if you hate them, know they are there.
A Logbook For People Who Forget Their Own Trips
By trip number twelve they blur together. Was the bear at Vallecito or the place with the bad road in? This KDP-interior logbook is built to print as a book, so the trips stack up in order and you can flip back.
I printed mine double-sided to save paper, which the layout handles fine. Coffee ring on page two already. It looks lived in, which is honestly the point.
The nitpick: it is designed for book binding, so loose-leaf in a folder feels slightly off, the margins are a touch wide on one side. Minor.
The Logbook I Keep In The Truck Glovebox
Same logbook family, slightly different interior, and I keep this copy in the truck instead of the trailer. Redundant on purpose. The trailer one stayed behind once when we swapped tow vehicles, so now there are two.
I fill it in at the gas station before we pull out, mileage, date, where we are headed. Took maybe a minute. The neighbor at our last spot asked what I was scribbling and I felt slightly smug.
The pages run a little gray on a low-ink home printer, so check your cartridge first. I did not, and trip eight is barely legible.
The Interior I Hand To Whoever Borrows The Rig
When someone takes the trailer out, I want a record of what they did to it. This logbook interior has the maintenance lines, so my buddy Theo can note he topped the propane and which tire looked low.
He actually used it. Wrote down the gray tank reading at the dump near Pagosa, which meant I did not come home guessing. Small thing, big peace of mind.
It prints clean at letter size. The only catch is the cover page is plain, so if you want it pretty you are adding your own art on top.
The Dreamy List Pinned Above The Boring One
Not every printable is a chore. This bucket list is where I track the trips I have not taken yet. Glacier. The whole San Juan loop. A coastal run in fall.
I printed it once, taped it above the checklist by the door, and it has quietly made us pick farther destinations. We crossed off the Great Sand Dunes last spring. Reema added three more in pen the same night.
Fair warning, it is aspirational, so it can make your actual weekend at the nearby state park feel small. It does not. But the list will whisper otherwise.
The One I Can Actually Retype When Plans Change
Most of these I print as-is. This editable one I open on the laptop and change the headers, because our 24-footer does not have half the systems the default assumes. No black tank section needed. Gone in two minutes.
I retyped the hookup checklist to match our exact order, water then power then level, because doing it out of order once tripped our surge protector at a site in Buena Vista. Now the list enforces the order.
Editing means you need software that opens it, and on a phone it is fiddly. Do this part on a real keyboard.
The Slim Planner For A Quick Two-Nighter
Some trips do not need the full binder. A Friday-out, Sunday-back run to the reservoir an hour away. This trip planner interior is lighter, just enough pages for a short haul without overplanning it.
I printed a five-pack of these once and keep them as single tear-off sheets. Grab one, fill the meals and the route, toss it in the door pocket. The last one I used still has Theo’s terrible handwriting on the snack line.
It is genuinely too thin for a two-week trip, so do not try. I learned that pairing it with a longer haul and running out of pages by day four.
The Non-Checklist Thing That Marks Our Site
Okay, this one is not paperwork. It is a wind spinner design, and it is on the list because finding your own site in a packed loop at dusk is its own checklist failure. We hang ours so people quit walking into our setup.
Reema picked the drive-slow one because the campground near Lake Pueblo had people ripping through at speed with kids around. It spins, it nags drivers gently, it also just tells us which site is ours from the bathhouse.
It is a design file for making the thing, not the thing itself, so you need a way to produce it. We farmed ours out to a local shop. Worth the wait, not instant.
The Art That Ended Up On Our Trip Mugs
Every repeat trip in our trailer starts the same way, coffee at 6am before the hitch check. So this camping coffee mug clipart felt on-brand for the door collage, and then I actually used it.
I pressed it onto two cheap enamel mugs for me and Reema. Hers chipped by the second season because she drops everything, but the print held where the metal survived. Mine still rides in the cupholder.
Clipart means you are placing and sizing it yourself, and the first mug I made had the design floating too high near the rim. Center it lower than you think.
The Flag That Stakes Our Spot Before The Awning Is Out
Last on the routine, first thing in the ground. A garden flag staked at the site entrance, so when my sister rolls in an hour behind us she finds the spot without four phone calls.
The camping-lady one made Reema laugh, so it earned its place. We stake it the second we level the trailer, before chairs, before the awning. At a crowded weekend near Ridgway it saved a genuine lost-in-the-loop situation.
It is a design to produce on flag fabric, not a ready flag, so factor in the make time. Ours faded a little after a full summer in direct sun. Replaceable, cheap enough.
Frequently Asked Questions
What to take camping checklist?
Honestly? After four years mine boils down to: hitch and tow gear, the hookup kit (water hose, power cord, sewer hose, surge protector), leveling blocks, kitchen box, bedding, first aid, and the boring safety stuff like propane shutoff and chocks.
I used to write it fresh every trip and miss something every trip. The can opener once, the sewer hose at Cedar Bluff once. Now I run a printed list the same way each time and the misses basically stopped. The point of a repeatable list is that it gets dull, and dull means nothing forgotten.
Can I print these at home?
Yep, all of them. I print the slim checklists and single-page stuff on my home inkjet without thinking twice.
The thicker planners and logbooks are where my home printer complains. It jammed on the Ultimate planner at page six on cardstock, so anything heavier or book-bound I take to a Staples and pay a couple dollars. If it is just a checklist for the door, your kitchen printer is fine.
What file formats do these designs come in?
The checklists and planners come as files you open and print, the kind you can pull up and send to a printer the same day. The logbooks are laid out to print as a book.
The wind spinner, the mug art, and the garden flag are design files for making a physical thing, not the thing itself. I learned that the hard way expecting a finished flag and getting art I had to take to a shop. Read the product page so you know which kind you are buying before you plan your weekend around it.
Do I need a Cricut or Silhouette to use these?
For the checklists, planners, and logbooks, no. You print them and that is it. No cutting machine anywhere in my door routine.
The wind spinner, mug clipart, and garden flag are the ones where a cutting or pressing setup helps, and even then I farmed mine out to a local shop instead of buying a machine. So a Cricut is nice to have for the craft pieces, totally skippable for the actual checklists.
Before You Pack Up
Year four, and the list has not changed much, which is the whole win. I hitch, I check tires, I confirm the propane is off, Reema reads it back, we pull out by 7. The trips that go sideways now are weather, not packing.
Last month near Ridgway I caught myself not even looking at the laminated sheet, just touching each item on it like a habit. Then I checked it anyway. The one time I skip it is the one time the sewer hose stays in the garage, and I have already lived that morning once.
More Camping Ideas We Love
Heads up: some links in this post are affiliate links. If you grab a file we love, we may earn a small commission at no extra cost to you. We only feature designs we would happily pack on our own trip.
