We are going on a 5 day camping trip at the end of the week. It's a ~6 hour drive non-stop (so obvs will be longer in the end).
Just FYI, both of us have been on family camping trips as children and I was in the Girl Guides so did a lot of camping with them. However, neither of us until earlier this year have been camping in over a decade. Our camping trip earlier in the year went fine, it was freezing as it was the desert in February but overall we had a great time and want to do more camping. As it was just an extended weekend we didn't bring a stove with us and just ate sandwiches and other non-hot food.
Yet, now we're going for slightly longer this time around, we were thinking it would be important to actually buy a gas stove to cook with. Especially as where we're going is up in the mountains without as easy access to stores and the cafe at the campsite is closed until the end of the month.
However, I am pretty scared about using propane with the gas stove. The idea that it can blow up and kill you kind of terrifies me. I'm scared of the thought of transporting it in a car (and in a car on mountain roads) and then using it at the campsite. DP seems nervous about it too.
We also have the problem of trying to dispose of the propane tank at the end of our trip. We live in an apartment so don't really have a safe place to store it, and I'll need to rent a car (don't currently own one ourselves) just to take the empty tanks to a recycling center when we get home.
In my position would you bother buying a camping stove to use, or just make do with non-hot food? Or would you just suck it up and buy one? Any tips on how to use one?