I've spent some time in the surviual forum and have put together a righteous bug out bag that sits in my car, ready for action. But I want to play with my new things, test them out -- so I've decided to take the family camping.

Background -- I've never been camping in my life, I'm 42, overweight and out of shape, and hate bugs. But I have two young sons with a lot of enthusiasm and I work from home so I have the time to put in. Plus the wife, who'd rather be camping at the Holiday Inn, has agreed to join our adventure. We've decided to start with car-side camping in a Maryland state park on the Eastern Shore and see how that goes. I want to practice making fires and building shelters, for one thing.

I've found articles on REI.com and elsewhere about how to choose tents, sleeping bags and so on. But I don't know which companies make the better items, and I'd rather pay a bit more for the better equipment, then start out with crap and work my way up. For instance, the choose lists tell me we probably want down-filled, 20+ degree sleeping bags, but not which companies I should be looking at. There was a hat thread on the survival forum that distilled down to "buy a Tilley", and since I needed a hat, I used that to buy a T4 Tilley which has been perfect so far. I'd really like to find more threads like that for tents, sleeping bags, sleeping pads, lanterns -- all the stuff we're going to need.

Any advice?

Thanks in advance.