I pride myself on being a “carry-on” only family, as I’ve written about before. There are many reasons why I like to pack in carry-on luggage, including that you have less chance of having lost or damaged luggage issues, it saves time at the airport especially when traveling internationally with multiple leg flights when you have to get your luggage and re-check it, and it makes traveling around your destinations easier.

For this trip however, we are going to have to check some bags as we decided to bring most of our camping gear with us. We still packed all of our clothes and toiletries in probably 3 carry-ons as we usually do (one for me, one for my husband, and one for the kids to share).

So even though I’ve been “travel hacking” for some time now, I still make mistakes and don’t realize certain things all the time. For example, I have a Delta sky miles credit card, which gets me a free checked bag. Since I never check bags I almost never use this benefit (the one exception was checking one bag when I came home from Spain, and one bag when I came home from Amsterdam. Both times were to bring home the fabric I bought in Europe 😊). Since I never use the benefit, I just assumed the free checked bag was for me, the primary cardholder. I spent months trying to figure out how to get all of our camping gear into one checked bag (under the 50 lb weight limit), and maybe one carry-on. After that was unsuccessful, I decided I would bite the bullet and we would check a 2nd bag for $25 each way. Included in these two bags were:

1. Two tents
2. 4 sleeping bags
3. 4 twin air mattresses
4. Air pump
5. Two burner Coleman stove
6. 2 backpacking camp chairs
7. Set of camping pots and pans
8. Various camping plates and utensils
9. Bag of rope
10. Hatchet/hammer tool
11. Collapsible water jug
12. Foldable cooler
13. 4 camping towels
14. 4 inflatable camp pillows

We assumed we would buy some larger folding chairs when we got there, as well as some other supplies that wouldn’t fit. I spent a good couple days before the trip trying to make all of this fit in two bags and keep them under the 50 lb weight limit.

Fast forward to the day before the trip, and I go on to the Delta app to check in. When I get to the screen about checking bags, I see that everyone in my party gets a free checked bag, not just me! After a quick moment of disbelief and a humbling fact-check with my expert traveler friends (who made fun of me of course), I realize that in fact, we can check 4 bags for free!!! This was a game changer! That’s 200 lbs of camping gear! I immediately found a couple more pieces of luggage and started piling more crap in. 2 large camping chairs, aluminum foil, paper plates, a tarp, ziplock bags.

I am now just hoping it all fits in the SUV!!!

To be continued…