Back from the woods

Been to to the woods for three days on my semi-annual camping trip.
Three of my friends have been going since high school, for me, I picked it up more recently.
This trip was around 38 or 39 for them, I have been on the last eight.
They are all married and for them, it is their twice a year break from wives and kids. For me, it is just a glorious thing to disappear into the woods for three days.
No cellphones. Not that it mattered. No cellphone reception in the mountains anyway.
Our nod to being carnivores was that we packed 16 pounds of meat for five meals.
We went into town for some football on Saturday afternoon, so it wasn't a completely technology free. But it was still pretty awesome.
We didn't put the fly cover on the tent and being able to look up at the stars on a perfectly clear night in national forest service style darkness was a remarkable thing.
I almost feel alive again.
My great wonder, after each of these trips, is why I don't camp more?
I live within just a couple of hours of some of the best country that America has to offer and I just don't.
Anyway, who here camps?

 

Haven't been in a long time. But I love being out in the wilderness away from everybody.

 

I haven't camped in years. My family used to go all the time. I loved going, especially in tents. That was awesome. If I could just get some people to go with me, I would do it more often.

 

Did the virgin go?

 

I used to.

Best trip was a five day canoe trip in Algonquin Park, a wilderness park about three hours north of Toronto. Covers about 8,000 square kilometres and has about 2000 kilometres of canoe routes.

Long before the days of cell phones.

Middle of the wilderness. Paddled a total of about 100 miles, camped on small islands, had some brutal portages. All the food had to be hoisted up trees in order to keep the bears away from the tent.

 

I live in the woods.

Wouldn't live anywhere else.

 

Me and some flight school buddies went recently (well, before flight school started, anyway), and we've begun planning the "mid-tour" trip. I'll be the last one to finish the first half of flight school, so they're waiting on me for a month.

We rent canoes from the recreation place on post, drop them in the river and go for three days, camping on the sandbars.

The last one was in late spring, and this one will be just before Thanksgiving.

Absolutely love it.

 

Outing alert: Jay's girlfriend is named Connie Swale.

 

Used to have some relatives up that way (some in Bancroft, others in Minden). I've only been up there once, but would love to go back.

Amen. I live roughly half an hour from a "dark skies" state park, and could never imagine moving to any place where I can't see the stars at night.

 

I camp and love it. I have different tents that I use, depending on how rough I'm roughing it and how much crap I take along for the trip. I also recently got (for free!) one of those little two or three person tents that I'll take along for storing gear and a cooler. That way it won't be taking up room in my tent.

I'm going camping with a friend in a couple of weeks, but we are just camping at a campground. It's kind of cheating when you can go up the hill a ways and take a shower in a real shower, but I've taken enough showers from a bag of water to be cool with that.

Depending on how cold it is, I may cheat even more and get a site with electricity and take a space heater along so I won't have to take the really big sleeping bags. Yes, I know, that would be a total sell-out.

 

Best campground I've ever stayed at:

http://www.blm.gov/ut/st/en/fo/moab/recreation/campgrounds/highway_128/goose_island.html

It's just across the river from the southern border of Arches National Park. And a fantastic place to set up shop for a base of operations while off-roading, hiking and biking through Moab.

 

Electrcity? Space Heater? Showers?

That's not camping.