Experiences, Part 3

Cold camp. Fires are nice, hot food is nice. But do you need them? If you bring a stove, you need to bring fuel. If you bring a stove, well you need to bring food to cook. Canned food, dehydrated food, eggs, meat. By simply eliminating your stove, you eliminate lots of stuff. No stove, no pots and pans, and don’t need oil. Not keeping perishables that need to be on ice before they are cooked, like meat? Don’t need a cooler or ice. What to eat? Granola is a good source of carbs. It’s dense, thereby compact. Hard cheeses and nuts are good sources of fat and protein. Dried fruits are vitamin and mineral rich. Hard dark chocolate has a higher melting point and makes for a good snack. My kefir experiment has gone really well, so provides all the goodness of milk without needing to keep it cold, and it’s a good source of bacterial slime! Anyhow, there is food without fire if you’re willing to sacrifice a bit. Incidentally, I do still carry a nice portable stainless steel pot with a latching lid and collapsible handle. It makes a good container and wash pot. If I did make a fire, I could cook something if needed, or heat some water up.

Orbitz, etc. If you are going to stay in a motel, reserve the room online using one of those travel services. You often get automatic discounts, compared to whatever rate you get by walking in. It’s pretty easy to park in front of a motel with wifi, and do this. We would often find a motel with wifi in their parking lot, I would find the best food in town and the nearest Starbucks while Bev would book a room from her own laptop. Not to mention being able to compare prices and read user reviews about where you might be staying.

The camp seat. I came across this while in an outdoor outfitters place in Dallas. I was looking to buy a longer/larger sleeping pad than the shoulder-to-hips Thermarest pad that I currently have. This pad is great, but my legs and especially my feet were freezing when sleeping in sub-freezing temperatures in my hammock. The camp seat is just like a Thermarest pad, but for your butt. It’s thick, and much softer than a regular sleeping pad, but it’s still inflatable and rolls up. This reminded me of my friend Igor telling me about the insulating foam pads they would wear strapped to their backs while hiking in Russia. The foam pads would be strapped with elastic cords to their lower lower backs to add extra cushion against the weight of their packs. But when they sat down, they would simply slide the pad under their butt. Genius!!! The camp seat is not quite the genius foam pad, but it’s quite a bit more comfortable, and it rolls up out of the way. Ever since I passed up buying the camp seat, there were countless times that I wished I had it. Sitting on cold ground, hard rocks, or wet marsh. It would make a nice pillow. I could also slide it under my feet to get my legs off of the floor of my hammock and insulate my feet from the cold. This way I wouldn’t have to buy a bigger bulkier sleeping pad, and I would have a multi-purpose “chair”.