Sticks and Stone

I like Camping. So I write about my trips here.

[sticks-and-stone]

Palm Bluff Conservation Area

November 25, 2022

I wasn’t planning to go solo on this trip at first, but Jenna had something come up at the last minute and couldn’t go with me. It had been about 2 months since our last trip and I didn’t want to give up the opportunity to go, so I decided at the last minute to go alone. I had reserved a spot at another St. John’s Water Management District Site. This one was called Palm Bluff Conservation Area. It was south of Daytona Beach, so about a 3 hour drive for me.  

I had the day off of work on Friday because of the Thanksgiving holiday, so I had the perfect opportunity to get out to camp before dark for once. I packed most of the car up the night before and loaded up the rest of it on Friday morning.  I left for camp a little bit before noon and stopped for the usual ice, beer, and snacks on the way. I relied too much on luck to find firewood for sale and ended up not getting any. I figured with how much daylight I had left, I could forage for some at camp and then go out and buy some the next day if I needed  to. 

I arrived at the gate at 330pm. The gate was entirely too difficult to find. It was tucked back in a corner of a field right off of the main road. There was another gate at the front of that same field with a very prominent sign on it that read “NO CAMPING” Not a great sign; pun fully intended. Eventually I found the correct gate marked for camping and got it open no problem. For some reason, a feeling of anxiety started brewing while I was opening the gate. I felt completely exposed to the road. Anyone driving by would be able to see me unlocking this gate. But I got it opened and I went in, locking the gate behind me. 

Usually at these water management district sites, the campsite itself is at least a mile or two (sometimes longer) from the gate. This site was right around the bend. All of 50 yards from the gate. Which meant anyone walking by the gate, if they angled themselves correctly, would be able to see me and my site. I knew I would have to set up strategically to keep my privacy and peace of mind. 

The first thing I did once I arrived at the site, was give it a little walk-around. I like to do this in order to find the best spot to set up the tent and to look for any safety vulnerabilities. This site was huge. It had a fire pit and benches in the middle of the huge open field (probably about 50-60 yards in diameter). Much larger than I was used to. I didn’t want to be too close to the fire pit with my tent because it could be seen from the gate, so I decided to set up in the far back corner between a group of pine trees - ripe for tarp hanging. 

I started by hanging my Paracord. Cutting it feels like a defeat, so I focused on keeping it at its full 150' length. I wrapped it between 4 trees that were not equally distant from each other. So hanging my tarps was going to be a challenge. I utilized my binder clips and folded tarp corners down to make them fit and after a couple of readjustments I made it work okay.

Once I got the tarps up, I put up my new hiking tent. It was easy to set up which was the point of it, ultimately. I was getting tired of the complicated set up of most hiking tents. so since my last one broke at the last camping site, I bought this one. It’s a simple X pole set up with doors on both sides. I got it set up in no time and then filled it with my sleeping gear. I didn't open my sleeping bag or inflate my sleeping pad just yet. I just threw everything into the tent thinking I would set everything up when it was time to sleep. 

Next, I set up my chair and the pop-up potty. I learned a much better way to set up the potty than I had been doing and it was significantly easier this time. It was around now that I started noticing the road noise. There was a thin layer of brush between this campsite and the highway, so the road noise, once I started noticing it, became deafening and the only sound my brain would process. I needed to distract myself. 

At this point, the sun was starting to go down so I took the opportunity to scavenge for some firewood while I still had some light. I found some big pieces and some sticks. There was plenty of dry pine straw around for kindling. I made my way over to the fire pit and to my shock and surprise I found a small skull in it. It was either a small dog, a raccoon, or a big cat. whatever it was, it freaked me out and I decided not to touch it. I just moved it to the back of the pit with a stick and planned to just build the fire at the front of the pit.  

The bugs were pretty bad here; worse than I expected for this time of year. I had my repellants, but nothing was really working on the gnats; especially once I turned on my headlamp. I knew a fire would be the best thing to help keep them away, but I was worried about how far away my setup was from the fire. Eventually I would have to leave the fire to go to bed. The bugs were going to be much worse over there, I could already tell.

I struggled pretty badly trying to light the fire. It’s a bit embarrassing. The pit was damp and the wood was damp; the kindling was dry, but that wasn’t enough. It was impossible to get anything to catch. I was getting frustrated; not only with the fire, but the bugs, the skull, the site placement. All of it was starting to upset me. I spent two solid hours fighting with the fire before giving up and deciding to just deal with the dark over by my tent. Maybe having a beer would help calm me down. 

I posted up in my chair under my tarp canopy in the dark. Turning off my headlamp helped with the gnat problem a little bit, but it did not help with my increasing worries. Suddenly,  irrational anxieties filled my veins. I tried to sip my beer and forget but I could not shake the feeling of fear. I felt so exposed; so vulnerable out here by myself. 

This was not the first time that I camped alone, so why did this trip feel so different? Instead of trying to rationalize with my anxiety, I tried to come up with ways to work with it. I decided I would sleep inside my car for the first night. I thought that maybe if I was locked in the car I would feel safer. I started by removing my sleeping bag and pad from the new tent and tossing it in my car. It was helpful that I hadn’t opened any of it up yet. Then I moved the items still in the car (such as the cooler, kayaking gear, guitar etc.) off to one side so that I could lay out my sleep system on the other side. I got it finished and then realized I would have to push my driver’s seat all the way up to make everything fit. Which meant I wouldn’t be able to quickly drive away if I needed to. (Admittedly, this is a strange place for my head to go and looking back on it, it's completely silly.)

So in the split instant, I just decided to leave all together. There was no point in staying at this secluded campsite any longer if I was going to be paralyzed by fear the entire time. So I started moving everything into my car. I didn’t fold up the tent; I just balled it up and shoved it in. I did the same thing with the pop up potty and the tarp canopy. I even cut some of the Paracord I worked so hard to keep intact. 

The whole time I was rush-packing I could feel gnats buzzing around my face and ears. Hands busy with gear, I couldn’t swat them away. And taking the time to do so just meant delaying the packing process. I felt like I was losing access to all of my senses. I couldn’t hear over the road noise and buzzing gnats. I couldn’t see in the dark. I couldn’t smell anything other than the remnants of an attempted fire. I was sweaty and shaking and tried (but failed) to get my bearings while I hurried to pack my gear. 

Within a few minutes I had everything in the car and was sitting in the driver seat trying to get my heartrate back down to normal. When Jenna and I evacuated Huguenot so many trips ago, we packed up in a similarly rushed manner. My thoughts went there and to that evacuation as I sat silently in my car. When we got into the car after shoving everything from the site into it at that beach, we were relieved and even started laughing and took a selfie. This time though it was dark, I was alone, and leaving felt like a life or death decision. I have a much less cluttered car than Jenna did at Huguenot, so packing up in a hurry was a bit easier and faster, but the dread that was building in me was increasing with every breath. This was so much worse than Huguenot. 

My anxiety worsened as I was sitting in the car. The desire to leave quickly became urgent as I fell into a full-blown panic attack. My heart raced, my vision blurred and tunneled, and my breathing shallow and then I was wheezing to catch it. I couldn’t see anything and I couldn’t hear anything over the sound of my heart beating in my ears and the road noise nearby (I couldn’t shake the road noise). The lack of access to my senses made me incredibly vulnerable and scared. I turned the car on, quieted the radio, and took off my headlamp. It was time to go. 

I circled the site once in my car before leaving to make sure I didn’t leave anything behind. As soon as the site was behind me and I was approaching the gate, The panic intensified and the feeling of being chased overtook me. (Nothing was chasing me to my knowledge). As I got to the gate, I dreaded having to get out of my car again to unlock it. But I did it and I got it on the first try. I drove my car through it and instead of stopping to lock it behind me, I just kept driving away. (I am ashamed of this part). 

I reached the road within seconds - the proximity which triggered this entire episode - and as I turned off onto the street I could feel the blood leaving my face and returning to its rightful places throughout my body. My hands kept shaking a little, but my vision focused again and without the bugs and total darkness, my other senses returned to me as well. 

I didn’t get half a mile away before the panic subsided to a low anxious roar. I was okay enough to stop at a gas station for some comfort snacks and then I was home and relaxed by 9pm. I texted Jenna while I was approaching my house to let her know that I had bailed and that I was home safely. I don’t know why, but I felt the need to let someone know that I was okay as a way of telling myself that I was okay. 

I didn’t unpack anything from the car except for the fanny pack that I was wearing. Dealing with all that balled up, messy gear would have just made my night even worse. My priority was dealing with my balled up messy brain. The next day was Saturday and I had nowhere else to be, so I planned to just deal with the gear then. I took a hot bath and then put myself to bed. 

The next day I got up and wasted no time dealing with the mess that I had made myself. Waking up in my own bed after a full night’s sleep was the comfort I so desperately needed. I got right to work on emptying out my car and folding tents, tarps, and other mistreated gear. I ran into my roommate and had to admit that the “vibes were off” with this camping trip and that as a rule, if we don’t feel completely comfortable where we’re camping, we leave. No questions asked and no judgment. He understood and the evacuation felt validated.

Jenna and I have always had that rule, but never had to use it. We always say that if even one of us gets a bad feeling about a camping spot, we just leave. That’s the beauty of car camping after all, right? The complete freedom to come and go. I’ll never know if it was the site placement, my own head having too much free space, or the fact that I was alone that really set me off. The site had a lot of cons to it including its proximity to the road, but overall it wasn’t entirely bad. (I’ll never go back though). Maybe it was the eerie skull I found. Maybe it was the last minute change of plans of Jenna’s. Maybe it was all of it combined for the perfect storm. Whatever it was, I likely won’t be solo camping outside of campgrounds and state parks for a while, if ever. 

Stay Dirty, 

Stone. 

[sticks-and-stone]

Crescent Lake Conservation Area

September 16, 2022 through September 18, 2022

Three months had passed since the Dutton Island overnight trip and our lives changed so much. I moved out of my second floor apartment, canceled my storage unit, and moved into a single story house with a two car garage. Jenna laid her father to rest, got a new job, and fell into a good routine. Naturally, after months of real life being hectic, we were more than ready for another camping trip. 

I went on to the St. Johns River Water Management District website and found an opening at the Crescent Lake Conservation Area. This was a new one for us, but I picked it because it was only about an hour and half away. My new place is about 15 minutes from Jenna’s house now, so traveling to and from camping trips became much easier. 

We both worked full work days on Friday so I met her at her house when we both got off and we departed from there. It took us closer to 2 hours to get there due to some traffic and frequent stops, but we finally arrived at the gate at about 8:30pm. After dark, as usual. On our way out there we kept stopping to look for some place to buy firewood. We had very little luck and had given up on it entirely when we came across a Winn Dixie. We walked inside and they had a huge pallet of bagged firewood on sale! This was our first good omen. Jenna and I tend to ride the vibes for camping pretty well. We keep a good attitude and good luck seems to come our way. This trip would be no different. Maybe even luckier than normal. The camping gods were on our side helping us celebrate the 3rd anniversary of our camping adventures!  

Once we got to the gate at the campsite, Jenna struggled to get it open so I took a crack at it and got it on the first try. Another good omen. The campsite was positioned about two miles from the gate along this long winding path just wide enough for my car. Once we arrived we saw the port-a-potty first and then a giant opening with a centralized fire pit surrounded by 4 benches, a standing grill, and a huge pavilion with 3 picnic tables and a fireplace. This place was stunning even in the dark. 

We pulled up next to the pavilion and before we even had time to get out of the car, Jenna said “there are lights in here!”. Our third, and most amazing good omen. We got out of the car and found the light switch at the back wall. We flipped the switch and the entire building illuminated. Right below the switch was an electrical outlet. This free campsite had full electricity! And here we were without the Electric Gear Box.

Ecstatic about our discovery, we were no longer stressed about arriving after dark. We took our time unloading the car and setting up. Jenna started with the fire, as that is her specialty while I unloaded the bins from the car and started organizing our space in this pavilion. It rained the whole time we were unloading, but it bothered us none. We were already so in love with this site and we had full cover from the rain. 

One of the tasks for this weekend was finding a decent bug repellent, so I laid them all out on one of the tables and started testing them out. The lights of the pavilion attracted plenty of bugs so I had an easy time figuring out which ones worked and which ones didn’t. We used these incense stick things propped up in an empty monster energy drink can. Those worked the best. But we also had an assortment of sprays, lotions, and roll-ons. 

Jenna had a hard time getting the fire started in the fireplace, so I took over while she started hanging her hammock between the posts of the pavilion. She was testing out a new sleep system this weekend as well. She has really taken to hammocking over the past year or so. 

At first, I had the fire going really well, but eventually I over-aerated it like I usually do and it went out. In frustration, I gave up. Jenna finished her hammock and took back over the fire and I got to work on my own sleep system. I was staying in my hiking tent since the cabin tent was still broken from my party weekend at Dutton Island, 3 months prior. I had never set up my tent on concrete and I had to get creative about staking it down. I ran paracord from the corners and staked them down in the ground outside the pavilion and tied a few off to tables inside. This looked okay and worked fine, but proved to be a bad idea later. What I should have done was set up outside the pavilion and hang my tarp over me for rain protection. I learned a good lesson. 

Once we got our tents and beds all set up, we sat at one of the picnic tables and pulled out our playing cards. Jenna spent the next hour or so kicking my ass in gin. Defeated, humbled, and exhausted, I retired to my tent. Jenna climbed up into her hammock soon after. I saw a couple of gnats in my tent, but they came in while I was crawling in. The tent itself did a great job keeping out the bugs. 

Jenna realized deep into the night that the poles she hung her hammock from were too close together. She ended up sleeping basically folded in half and nearly touching the ground. 

I awoke the next morning at about 7:15 without an alarm. My need to pee usually wakes me up while we’re camping. I’ve never needed an alarm. I attempted to use the port-a-potty but was startled by a tree frog trapped in there with me. I wouldn’t use it again the entire weekend. I don’t think that Jenna used it either. It was gross and in a private campsite like this one with no neighbors, relieving ourselves wouldn’t be an issue. 

Once I was back at our pavilion, I pulled out the kettle and single burner butane attachment and started on my coffee. I also made hot lemon water to help warm me up. It wasn’t cold, but it was chillier in the morning than I had planned for. I brought my laptop along this time to try and get some writing done, so I pulled that out and by 8am I was typing away, working on camping trip reflections from the months passed. 

I was up and writing for about an hour when Jenna woke up. Though I enjoyed the time to myself and my writing, I was grateful when she woke up! We chatted for a little bit and she helped me fill in a couple of blanks in my memory from our trips of the past. I took a break from writing to make myself some pancakes. Jenna opted for a protein bar. 

On a whim, we decided to see how close a spring was to our campsite. As it turned out, we were about 30 minutes from the Ocala National Forest which is home to 3 of my favorite springs! We decided on Juniper Springs since it had great hiking and Jenna had never been. So we packed up only what we needed and took off! 

We got to the park, paid the fee for day passes, and immediately hit the trails. We wanted to beat the forecasted rain. Before we started on the trails, we walked through the old water mill museum that they had onsite. The best trail started behind the mill, but there were maintenance guys there with the access blocked off, forcing us to go around the trail that runs through the campground there. We hiked for just a couple of miles and checked out Juniper Springs Campground. It is definitely on my wish list for camping.

Once we had our hearts’ fill of hiking, we came back to the car to cool off and had a quick snack. It started sprinkling a bit, but since we were off the trail, we didn’t really mind. We walked over to the restrooms and changed into our bathing suits. The air was chilly and damp, but we were going to swim in this spring no matter what. 

We swam for only long enough to cool our bodies down and then booked it out of there as the rain began to fall more heavily. We dried off by the car as best we could and then just laid towels on our seats and rode back to camp in damp bathing suits. As soon as we left the park the rain stopped and we were able to open up the windows and air-dry on the way back to the campsite. 

Once we arrived back at camp about mid-afternoon, Jenna got the fire going again and moved her hammock to the other side of the campsite between two trees. She struggled for a while to find the right spot and even the one she settled on gave her tons of problems. One thing about Jenna is that once she sets her mind to something, she gets it done. Getting this hammock up in a better spot was no different. 

While she worked on her sleep system, I worked on mine. I didn’t want to sleep in a rigged up hiking tent when it functions far better when anchored into the ground as designed. So I worked on getting it taken down so that I could move it to the field next to the trees where Jenna was setting up. 

The heaviest of the rain had passed us, but we were still expecting a small amount in the wee hours that night. My hiking tent is advertised as fully rain-proofed and I was excited to put that to the test. But that didn’t matter because as I was un tying it from the picnic table that it was anchored to, the top cross-over pole snapped clean in half. There was no way I was going to set it up to full functionality now. 

Luckily, Jenna still carried her hiking tent in her backpack and I was able to borrow it. So got that set up and put my sleeping pad and bag inside and covered it in the rain fly. This tent had already proven to keep Jenna dry during rainy nights, so I was grateful for the security but incredibly bummed about my tent. 

Dinner time was approaching so we left our sleep systems to go back to the pavilion (about 50 yards away) and started working on food. We brought the smoldering fire back to a blaze and I got back out the laptop and started back into writing. I made it through 3 camping trip reflections on this trip and I am never camping (at least car camping) without my laptop again.

Jenna cooked a sloppy joe Hellofresh meal that Laura had sent home with me earlier that week. Probably a top 3 meal that I’ve had while camping if I’m being honest. We have cultivated a near-perfect kitchen system in our car camping gear that there isn’t much limit to what we can make for a meal. 

Several trips back we decided to stop over-planning and overpacking for our meals at camp. Instead, we have switched to just planning on one big meal, typically Saturday night, and just snacking around the other meal times. I’ll still bring pancakes cuz they’re easy, but no more of the eggs-bacon-full lunch spread-huge dinner-second-breakfast deal. Now it’s simplified, far less expensive, less wasteful, and usually far higher quality. One of the many ways this trip helped us prove our skills that we had cultivated over the last three years. 

I cleaned up after dinner and wrote for another hour or so, but became exhausted very quickly. I retired to my tent (Jenna’s tent) by 9pm and was asleep soon after. 

I remember waking up quite frequently that night. I was nervous about bears for some reason. I just couldn’t shake the thought of one wandering up to camp, trying to get into my car or god forbid my tent. Jenna was within ear shot but this was the farthest apart that we’d set up our tents. So her presence wasn’t felt and the sinking feeling of being alone was. I must have been able to shake it, because I don’t remember anything else until I woke up at 3am with the sudden urge to pee. The pavilion (and the spot behind the solid wall where I had been doing my business earlier in the day and the night before) felt a million miles away. So I just stepped 20 paces away from the tent and squatted right out in the open and complete dark. 

The next morning I was up by 730. This time, I didn’t write or make coffee, I just pulled the tent and its contents to the pavilion and began the process of cleaning and packing away gear. Jenna joined me soon after and wordlessly, nearly effortlessly, we repacked the gear, exchanged the items we usually end up swapping on accident (or in the case, borrowed tents), and got the car organized in a matter of an hour. 

This is an impressive feat because normally I spend Sundays re-itemizing the gear lists and moving gear around from one bin to another. Sometimes I do away with bins all together and consolidate others, but this time felt very different. I didn’t change a thing. For once, there was no instance during the camping trip that made me think I could pack something better. The only thing I changed was how I separate the check lists out by type of camping:

Summer Primitive

Summer Glamping

Winter Primitive 

Winter Glamping

Backpacking

The type of camping that we’re going to be doing will dictate which bins we bring. For example, summer primitive camping means we’re going to be camping somewhere without electricity when it's warm outside. So I don’t need to bring the electric gear bin or my sleeping bag, but I will bring a sleeping bag liner or a top sheet instead. But the summer glamping type would mean we do have electricity, so I'll bring the electric gear but still use a sheet instead of a sleeping bag. The gear works basically the same in the winter, but I would bring a sleeping bag and for the winter glamping trips: a heater. The backpacking type is just that. The hiking backpack.

The hiking backpack contains a lot of core gear including my hiking tent, so it comes on all the trips. Primitive and Glamping just means we can bring the car to the site, so we can carry the bins that are needed for that weekend. I like this system a lot. I hope it sticks.  

Happy and content with our re-introduction into the forest, we hit the road to go home by 8:30. We stopped at Dunkin for a celebratory breakfast and iced coffee - our favorite way to reintegrate back into society. I had Jenna home by 10 and myself home by 10:30. It took me no time at all to unload the already-organized bins from my car to their spot in the garage. I emptied the contents of the cooler into my fridge and put the now thawed ice packs back in the freezer. I started doing laundry before taking a shower and a well-earned nap. 

This was the most satisfying feeling I had felt after a camping trip in a very long time. Reflecting on it brings me much joy and encouragement to keep going. I feel like the stress around camping that I was experiencing had a lot to do with my living arrangements and how difficult it was to pack and unpack from trips. It may have also been the frustration of getting my packing system JUST right. And the satisfaction of feeling like I have finally, after 3 years, accomplished that felt unbelievably gratifying. I am excited for the trips ahead of us. I finally feel like we are entering a new stage of our camping adventures. 

Stay Dirty, 

Stone. 

[sticks-and-stone]

Dutton Island Preserve

June 25, 2022 through June 26, 2022

This one was a treat. I debated whether to even write about it. It was less of a camping trip and more of a massive party where I drank way too much, watched my coworkers get trashed and make out with one another, and I broke some gear. But I am going to include it in this blog for the simple fact that I am very impressed with my site. I ended up at a completely different site (details below), but this one looked really cool and I want to brag about it. A quick disclosure: I drank a ton on this trip; way more than I normally do. Some details may be warped and timelines confused. This is not a perfect recollection by any means.

Firstly, it’s important to note that when I’m not out in the woods with my friends, paddling a river, or swimming in a spring, I’m a full time trial paralegal for a very large personal injury law firm in my hometown. This law firm just happens to work closely with a lawsuit funding company called Oasis. Oasis just happened to throw an overnight campout party on a small island near the northside of town called Dutton Island Preserve. And I just happened to come across the flier at work in the breakroom one day. It took me 0.5 seconds to decide to go. I invited Jenna, of course, but she was still dealing with the fallout of suddenly becoming an orphan and a homeowner, and we had just spent the weekend prior camping. So she wasn’t available to come along with me. Since a few of my coworkers would be attending, I decided it would be fine to solo this trip. Plus, this girl I was seeing (we’ll call her B for privacy reasons) told me she might be interested in joining me. So this was starting to feel like a party weekend and maybe a cool way to fall back in love with camping. 

Oasis booked the entire island for the night. Which meant that every person out there would be there for this Oasis party. They planned to have kegs, snacks, and a live band. They invited members of our firm as well as other firms and doctors offices in the personal injury network of Northeast Florida, so there was going to be a good mix of people I knew and didn’t know. I liked the opportunity to show off my camping skills to people in my professional life, but I didn’t realize that for everyone else, this trip would be about everything but camping. 

My work friend, Yinette, an avid music festival camper, had been out to Dutton Island many times and gave me a good idea of what to expect. The campground/island was split down the middle with two campsites on the eastside of the island and a collection of about 7-8 campsites on the westside of the island. She said that the best place to be was the side with just the two sites. She said that it was more elevated (safe from high tide) and private (farther away from the “hub” where the band and the party would be). 

For once I got out to camp early. Since this was just a one night trip (Saturday to Sunday) I woke up early on Saturday to get my gear from storage and headed to the island. I arrived at about 11:30 am. There was no gate and no ranger station to check me in. I just drove to the side of the island Yinette told me to go to and pulled my car in. She also instructed me to get out there as early as possible to ensure that I got a good spot. She wasn’t specific about how early, but she didn’t show up until about 4pm. 

The first thing I did was scout out the area a little bit. I was the first person out there (at least on that side of the island) so I had my pick of the two large sites. They were numbered, but not clearly separated. I figured as more people showed up we would all just squeeze in where we fit. I walked to the water’s edge and could see some of the sites on the other side of the island from across the bay. There were already cars parked on that side so I began to wonder if no one knew that this side even existed. I wasn’t about to tell them and spoil my solitude. 

My side of the island had a mulch floor. The county (who owns and maintains the park) clearly had just been out there to clear out some trees so I imagine that they used the mulch from those. The sky was a beautiful shade of blue and the island was covered in palm trees. It was peaceful, quiet, and picturesque. Now it was time to get to work on my site. 

The first thing I did was find my spot. I positioned myself between two palm trees that were about 5 feet away from the brush that provided privacy from the road that connected the campsites to one another. I tied a length of paracord from one tree to another, creating a taut line about 10 feet long. 

I draped my tarp over the line and tied it to the brush behind me and staked the other side of it down in the ground . I adjusted the ties in the brush to make sure there was a slight angle so water couldn’t collect on it. Just a couple small tricks I've learned over the years.

I opened up my hiking tent and set it up directly under the tarp. I expected this to be harder, but it was a really simple process. Getting the shade and rain protection up first proved to be a good idea. At the very least it gave me a place to have shade and take breaks from setting up in the heat. And boy was it hot.

Once the tent was set up it was just a matter of setting out all of the rest of the gear.  The doormat and the sleep system (yoga mat, inflatable pad, sleeping bag) were next - I figured that with the amount of intoxication I would be experiencing I would end up sleeping on top of the sleep system instead of in it. I set up my chairs under the shade of my tarp and got the gear bins out of my car which I used as tables. Within about an hour of arrival, I was fully set up and still completely alone on this side of the island.  

This is about where the serious camping ends and the serious partying starts. It was after noon so I decided it was safe to start drinking. I had yet to venture over to the main side of the island. I wasn’t quite ready to hang out with people. I wanted to hang out at my own campsite and take it all in for a while. While I was sitting and drinking alone a Jeep pulled in and passed my campsite toward the far end of the island (the other campsite on this half of the island). I saw a woman driving and she had two yellow kayaks on the roof, yet she was alone. I didn’t think much more of her until she walked over to my campsite about 20 minutes later. She was carrying the same flier that I had found in the breakroom a few weeks prior.

“Are you here for this?” she said to me, waiving the flier over her head. “Sure am. I’m the first one, I think!” I said. She seemed very relieved to hear my answer. 

I studied her and tried to figure out if I knew her from work. There were plenty of people from other firms and doctors' offices invited, so she could have been anyone. She was also dressed in a tank top, running shorts, sandals, and a sun hat, so even if I knew her from the office I may not recognize her in her weekend clothes. I introduced myself and told her where I worked, asking her to do the same. Her name was Katie. I never got her last name. 

“Oh, I deliver your money!” she said. That was strange. “What?” I asked, “What does that even mean?” I smiled, but I was clearly confused.

She explained that she was the FedEx delivery person for our building. Whenever we receive settlement checks, they usually come via FedEx and everyone is filled with excitement to see her. I had never had any encounter with her at work, but she recognized my name.

“The receptionist gave me this flier and said it was an open invitation. I love camping and kayaking and I had never been out before so I figured ‘why not’” she explained.

It was strangely comforting to know that someone else came out here alone and with no idea what to expect.  Katie stayed with me at my campsite and sat in my extra chair. We drank beers and she helped me set up my pop up potty. I knew the park had bathrooms but I had a feeling that they were on the other side of the island and shared by everyone at this party. Having a pop-up would prove very handy.

After an hour or so of getting to know each other and swapping stories about our cats and jobs, another car pulled in and a couple got out with their two dogs. The couple started putting together their campsite and the dogs ran over to greet me and Katie.

A woman came running after the dogs, apologizing profusely.. We reassured her that it was totally fine and that their dogs were really friendly and sweet. Her partner came over next. A shirtless, redneck-looking fellow. He introduced himself and Katie and I did as well. The woman introduced herself as Paige and said that she worked for my firm. I didn’t recognize her face, but did recognize her name; not uncommon for a company our size. I told her that I had worked in the firm’s call center for a while before being promoted through the ranks and that I knew her name very well, but had never met her in person. It was so nice to put a face to her name after all these years.

Comforted by the fact that everyone I had met so far were connected to my company in some way, I felt a bit more at ease. I kept drinking beer and chatting with my new friends and playing with dogs until about 2pm when someone rolled up in a truck yelling that the kegs had arrived.

I decided to drive to the other side of the island instead of walking. I carpooled my new friends and we all went to go check it out. There was a pavilion there with SIX KEGS all primed and pumped. There were several picnic tables under the pavilion where people were sharing snacks and children were playing with toys.

I said hello to a few coworkers I recognized, introduced myself to the host from Oasis, and just decided to go back to camp. I filled a few cups of beer and carried them to my car. Katie came back with me. She wanted to take her kayak out.

Alone again, I sat down under my tarp and enjoyed the peace and my buzz. Before long, Yinette finally showed up. She was smart and brought her bike which had a cute little basket on the front, a cup holder, and a Bluetooth speaker. She is a whole vibe and there is much to learn from her.

This is about the time things started to get a little blurry for me. We hung out for a bit, going back and forth to the pavilion on the other side of the island until the cover band that was hired was due to start playing around 6pm. We found more friends from work and hung out with them during sound check. I don’t remember the name of this band, but they seemed like a typical cover band that played school dances, weddings, and such. They started, but didn’t finish about a dozen songs during their sound check. It was increasingly annoying with each song. Once they finally started finishing songs, they weren’t that good.

My date, B, showed up at about 8pm. I took her to the pavilion area first so she could meet my friends and then I took her back to my campsite. She decided then that she wanted to stay the night. The two of us would definitely not fit in my hiking tent, so I got my cabin tent out of my car and we proceeded to set it up with the help of Yinette.

Somehow, during set up, a pole was broken. So we had to set the entire thing up without the porch. It looked sloppy, but it would be functional. I was confident now that it wasn’t going to rain, so we did without the rainfly the same way Jenna and I had done the weekend prior.

The 3 of us went back over to the party pavilion and got a few more drinks and then came back to our side. Over near where Katie and Yinette set up their camps, there was a large, lovely fire pit and a bunch of my coworkers had built a roaring fire and gathered round it. B and I found our place on a log seat and passed a bottle around with our friends, making fun of the cover band and pretending like we don’t see each other getting very comfortable with our dates. After about an hour or so (time began to go by so much faster as I got drunker - so who actually knows) B and I decided to retire to our tent. We didn’t say anything to anyone. I bent down and pet a dog and then we just Irish-goodbyed our way out of there and went back to the privacy of our tent. This is my favorite way to leave a big group of drunk people: silently and with a date.

For decency’s sake and for the simple fact that I remember nothing from this point, this is where my recollection of that night ends. The next thing I remember is waking up to my alarm the next day with a killer headache and my date laying next to me. We stayed in bed for a little bit trying to listen out for our neighbors, but we heard nothing. I assumed that they were still asleep in their tents.

We finally got up and started walking around looking for other signs of life. But everyone was gone. Not a soul was left at camp. So we started packing up my stuff and then left in our separate cars. I went home hungover and sleepy, but satisfied from 24 hours of bliss and camping. I had fallen in love with it once again and even unpacking at the storage unit and my second floor apartment didn’t seem that bad this time.

At work the next day, I ran into my coworkers who shared this experience with me and the shame across their faces was surprising. I asked Yinette what happened and why everyone had left so early that morning. She explained that around 4am, cops showed up and made everyone call it a night. Some slept off their intoxications for a few more hours, some left right then and there, but everyone was up and gone by 6am. I had no memory of seeing lights, hearing sirens, or being woken up. I guess the police were only worried about the noisy campers, not B and I who were fast asleep.

Though this trip was entirely different from what I was used to, it was incredibly memorable (from what I can actually remember) and doing a party-trip like this from time to time is  a great way to remind myself how much fun camping can be.

Stay Dirty,

Stone

[sticks-and-stone]

Florida Caverns State Park

June 17, 2022 through June 19, 2022

Jenna and I wanted to do something a little bit different for our June trip. First of all, this was Jenna’s first trip in a while, so we wanted it to be special. It was also June…in Florida. So we were concerned about the heat. We wanted to go somewhere we hadn’t been before and somewhere that would have electricity and showers. We landed on the Florida Caverns State Park in Marianna, FL. This trip was full of spontaneous decisions and will always stand out from a lot of our other trips. 

This campground was nearly 6 hours away from us so we took Friday off of work so that we could get a good start and try to avoid arriving after dark. We managed to get to the park at about 530pm local time (we had to cross a time zone). The front gate had firewood for sale so we didn’t have to worry about going off site to get any this time. 

As we drove through the campground we noticed a few things. There weren’t that many trees, which meant that the sites were not going to be very private. They were, however, gravel floors outlined with railroad ties and manicured with a grass field in between them. Centralized was a newer building that housed the bathrooms and showers. We learned later that the park used to be more heavily wooded, but a hurricane had taken out most of it.

The first and most important step was to provide ourselves with shade. Since we had plenty of daylight left, we didn’t want to rush to set up. But the sun was brutal and the lack of trees meant we were like ants on asphalt - roasting. So we set up the pop up canopy first, angling it so that we had a shady spot to rest as we slowly got set up. Next, we set up the cabin tent, but we left the rainfly off. We decided against the pop up potty this time, since the campsite was so wide open and the bathrooms were not only fairly close by, they were super nice (air conditioned). 

The next step was to finish unloading the car. I took out all of the bins and set them on the site’s picnic table. Instead of using our folding table as a landing surface or eating space, we put it inside of the cabin tent screened-in porch. This proved way handier than I thought. It was nice to have an outside, bug free space to hold gear without opening the tent constantly.. I got the air mattresses inflated and laid it inside the tent and then Jenna and I changed into our swimsuits. 

About 500 yards away from our site, through a heavily wooded path, was a little spring! This was a surprise to me - I had no idea this was here. We got down to the water where a handful of teenagers were on the floating dock and swimming in the little swimming area. I don’t like to shame children for being children, but there’s something about groups of teenagers that is inherently intimidating to me. So we went over to another small swimming area on the other side of the floating dock.

The second swimming area was occupied by two small (maybe age 10) children who seemed cool with me sharing their small space. I jumped on the water enough to get my entire body wet and covered in the 72 degree water. Then I stepped out and we headed back to camp. Unlike the teenagers, I didn’t really want to play in the water. I simply wanted to cool off from sweating through the campsite set up before the sun went down.

Once we got back to camp, we started a fire. The firepit was in an awkward location and we didn’t want to move our chairs out from under our pop up canopy so we just sat with the fire about 20 feet away from us. Which was fine since we didn’t need the fire for warmth. We could have used it for bug repellant though. We are always experimenting with different types of bug repellant. This time, I was told by a coworker that dryer sheets (specifically Bounce) were good to keep gnats away. I don’t know if that was true, but boy did we smell nice. 

For dinner, Jenna and I made hot dogs over the fire. Super easy and mess free; a camping favorite. Once I was fed, I set up the electrical gear inside the tent and laid our rope lights down around the perimeter of the site. Next was the best part of car-glamping: taking a real shower! The bathhouse was air conditioned and the water ran hot; it was perfect. 

At about 9:45pm local time, we got sleepy and retired to bed. Since there was no rain forecasted, we kept the rainfly off of the tent which meant without it and without tree coverage, we had a full view of the night sky from inside of our tent. I gazed at the stars for a while and then fell asleep. In perfect camping fashion, I woke up around 5am needing to pee. I made the dark walk to the bathhouse since squatting outside the tent was not an option thanks to the close proximity of our neighbors. With the exception of a few bugs on the outside of the bathroom door, the experience is like no other. When you’re used to blindly squatting in bushes that you hoped were safe, an airconditioned, well lit, and clean bathroom is a massive luxury. I did get to see one very blurry owl outside of the bathroom. 

I laid back down, but was up and moving around again by 7am. Jenna and I made coffee in the kettle over the butane burner and then went straight to the park’s visitor center. There, we scheduled a cave tour and scoped out the gift shop. We drove around the park for a little bit seeing everything that they had to offer, which besides the famous caves was mostly hiking trails and a small museum. 

We went back to camp to wait out the time before our noon cave tour. I made some breakfast; still using the egg substitute. I washed dishes and soon became bored of sitting around camp. This is usually the time when I would start messing around with how the gear is packed, but in this case, I wanted to keep myself and Jenna entertained. 

So we got back in the car and drove to the visitor center again. We decided to go on a hike, which ended up being more strenuous than I expected. But we saw plenty of cool looking trees, mushrooms, and even found cool places to take new profile pics! 

Once we came to the final fork, Jenna decided to do another loop. I chose to check out the museum instead. Apparently the loop that Jenna found was much longer than we thought and she was gone for a while. Had it not been such a populated trail, I would have grown more worried. Instead, I took my time reading each placard and seeing all the exhibit casings. But mostly enjoying the AC.  

Jenna finally showed up, all sweaty from her brisk walk so we went and sat in the car for a while to get some snacks and enjoy the direct AC for a bit. We had a little bit more time to kill until our tour. We waited until about 10 minutes before tour time to walk back up to the area marked off for people waiting. We stood around for a while wondering about our tour guide. 

Turns out he was all of 16 years old… if that. This blond child who was apparently extremely passionate about these caves was a local and spent his summers volunteering here. This was the person responsible for the well-being of about a dozen of us. He led us down about 30 feet underground to the beginning of the cave system. It was cold and slippery and a bit of a tight squeeze. A few members of our group were clearly nervous. Surprisingly, I really enjoyed it. 

Once we were all in the cave, our baby tour guide started talking about how the different formations came to be and how long of a process it is for nature to create such an amazing structure. He showed us the parts that were man-made and all the nicknames the staff had come up with for certain “rooms”. It was all really interesting and in Florida we don’t typically have caves due to our low elevation, but this is one of the rare places where we do. So Jenna and I stayed toward the back of the group, took an insane amount of photos and just played around in the cold caves. It was a nice reprieve from the hot June air back up at ground level. 

After the cave tour we went back to the giftshop/camp store and bought Gatorades and a sticker for my collection. I asked about Florida State Park passports like I have for the Georgia parks, but they looked at me like I had 3 heads. I think it may be time to give up on that dream. 

We drove back to camp and it was only about 2pm so we started brainstorming about what to do with the rest of our day. In typical summer camping fashion, we started looking for some place to swim. First we thought maybe a gulf coast beach, but those ended up being too far away and we’d have to cross back into the other time zone. So we found some place called “Mystic Spring'' which was apparently a spring-fed swimming hole. So we piled back into the car and started heading that way. 

We followed the GPS there and when we “arrived” it was literally nothing. We got to the very sketchy looking (and locked) gate. There were no signs other than a “no trespassing” sign that was covered in chipped paint and cobwebs. We had very clearly gone to the wrong place. We drove around the area a little hoping the GPS just got it wrong, but the further down the side streets we went, the more uneasy we became. We gave up once we reached an overgrown cemetery at the end of a road. We decided to set the GPS to get us back to camp. 

On the way back we saw signs for a county park and boat ramp and thought that maybe we’d get lucky and they’d have a swimming area too, so we took a small detour and went to check it out. We got down there and there were people swimming right off the side of the boat ramp. We found a parking spot and hopped in with them! 

After just a few minutes, the majority of the people swimming got out to go eat. I guess they were all there together for a party. That left me and Jenna in the water alone with just one other guy. This gentleman ended up being far too chatty for my comfort. We told him about driving around looking for a swimming hole and he (as a local) tried to explain to us how to get to some other good places along the river to swim. We pretended to understand his landmark-by-landmark instructions and then made an excuse to leave. We weren’t in the water long, but we were there long enough to cool ourselves off during the hottest part of the day. 

We got back to camp at around 5pm and just hung around camp drying and cooling off. We used the adjustable legs of the pop up canopy to follow the sun down and keep ourselves in the shade. We called it “shade chasing”. Once the sun was fully set, the temperature dropped to a very comfortable level and Jenna got to cooking dinner. 

She found a recipe online for camp nachos and it was probably one of the best meals that we have had while camping. I think she is really getting the knack of cooking at camp. The propane grill helps a lot, but even with just a fire she is truly a genius. I eat better on the weekends when we’re camping than I do during my normal week. 

After we ate dinner I cleaned up the “kitchen” which was just me rinsing off the dishes, wiping off the grill and bear-proofing the campsite. Bears aren’t really a concern in such a highly populated campground, but raccoons certainly are, so we keep up the habit of keeping things out of anyone's reach. Some people will hang their trash, I prefer to put it back in the car. Just being extra careful. 

While I was moving around the site keeping everything clean, I also set out the rope lights around the whole perimeter of the site and turned them on. It was a really cool look. A few trips back (maybe the 1st Stephen C. Foster trip) I decided to stop hanging these rope lights on the pop up canopy. It’s so much work with very little pay off. It’s a 100 foot rope light and incredibly difficult to maneuver. Laying it on the ground is way easier, illuminates the entire site, and helps set the perimeter. 

To add to the light aesthetics, we also lit a few candles and opened up the glow sticks that Jade and I never used during the 2nd Stephen C. Foster trip. We made all sorts of things with the glow sticks and reverted back to young children while the actual children from the campground kept riding by on their bikes taking note of our artwork. I probably enjoyed this part of our trip more than I enjoyed the caves themselves. 

In typical Saturday night fashion, we were in bed pretty early. It’s easy to exhaust ourselves when we only have one full day to take in the area. We don’t mind. It usually means getting up that much earlier on Sunday to get a good start on packing and heading home. 

Being so far away from home this time, we were eager to get out early anyway. We were probably out of camp by about 10am and home by mid afternoon. Once again the post-camping struggle was all too real. Lugging all the bins and big gear to the storage unit (and fighting the crowds there) is my least favorite. After that chore, I still have to carry the remaining gear up to my second floor apartment and THEN I finally get to eat a meal, shower, and rest (while doing laundry). 

During this trip I didn’t get to organize gear all that much. I did, however, make some changes to how I pack the bins once I returned home. This is the system I ended up with:

Shelter Bin - Medium Sized Bin -Tarps, stakes, etc. 

Comfort Bin - Medium Sized Bin - Fans, slides, wipes, generator, etc. 

Kitchen Bin - Small Sized Bin - kitchen stuff...duh

Tool Bin - Small Sized Bin - tools?

Plug-In Bin - Medium Sized Bin - Anything that requires an outlet. Mostly the lights and bug zapper  

Winter Bin - Small Bin - Gloves, hand warms, extra beanie, etc. 

Loose Items - sits alone in car - Things that are too big for the bins like the grill! 

Fanny Pack - My headlamp, bellows, a lighter, my phone and stuff. 

Bug Bag - Dry Bag - Various forms of bug protection. We try literally anything and everything. 

This is  a much simpler system and makes things so easy to pack. We decided that after this trip we won't be bringing the folding picnic table. We have NEVER camped anywhere that didn’t already have a picnic table and often there were more than one. Removing it makes packing the car so much easier. 

Being out in a campground with Jenna felt nice. It had been months since we were able to camp together and having her around makes things easier. Despite that, I still felt that sting of “is this more work than it’s worth?” when I got home. I really needed to work on how I can change that and go back to enjoying myself before, during AND AFTER each trip. It won’t stop me yet, but it will continue to weigh on my mind. 

Stay Dirty, 

Stone.

[sticks-and-stone]

Stephen C. Foster State Park

May 27, 2022 through May 29, 2022

This trip had been planned for a while since Jenna and I fell in love with Stephen C. Foster State Park in Georgia. However, Jenna’s dad passed away in March and since our last Stephen C. trip in February, she hadn’t really been up for camping or she was too busy at home to make it. So I found myself looking for a back up buddy to come along with me this time. I asked around and my work friend, Jade, was down to come. She just had to be able to bring her dog, Delilah. 

So Jade and Delilah accompanied me to the park along the swamp in south Georgia. We got a later start than I intended to and ended up at camp by about 430pm. We were in a different site than the one Jenna and I had used months prior and on the total opposite side of the campground. 

Our site was small. Like really small. It was advertised as an RV site, but I couldn’t figure out how any RV would be able to get into this space. We barely had enough room to put up the 20 foot tent without nearly sticking out into the road. 

Of course while I was setting up, it started raining hard and Jade had to take Delilah back into the car to escape the rain, leaving me to finish setting up. I was able to at least get the pop up canopy up rather quickly to protect the gear while I got everything out, but that didn’t help me from getting absolutely drenched within minutes of arrival. So far, luck was not on my side.

Eventually, the rain died down and I got the campsite all set up. I put some towels and fans inside the tent to dry it out and then hung the towels up to drip dry for future use. I took lots of breaks in an attempt to relax, which was becoming harder and harder with each trip. 

I never run out of things to do. I can never seem to stop and relax when I’m camping. At least for the last couple of trips it has felt like more of a full time job than a relaxing hobby for me to go camping. Constantly sweating and getting home exhausted seems to defeat the purpose of going at all. This trip was no different. I loathe the idea of sitting still. I find excuses to get up and fix something every chance I get. 

This trip was no different. I moved the pop up canopy to a better location. I started a fire. I organized our gear again. I moved the car. Whatever I could find to do, I did it. 

It got dark pretty quickly and as it did, these giant mosquito-looking things started to appear. They weren’t biting bugs, but they looked like grasshopper-sized mosquitoes. It was equally terrifying and intriguing. 

As the sun started to fall, we walked to the comfort station. Remember, this is the campground with the best comfort stations. The single room stalls, each with their own toilet, shower, sink, and bench. No more showering in a stall next to someone else showering in a stall. And a toilet in the same room. I was excited to use them again and they did not disappoint. Besides being un air conditioned, they were perfect. Obviously hotter than when we used them in February, but still way better than most public campgrounds. As a bonus, the sunset looked amazing from the outside of the bathrooms.

When we got back to camp, Jade pulled out this really cool star projector and illuminated the inside of the pop up potty with it, as well as the trees above us. It truly was spectacular. I set up the new pop up potty, which proved to be incredibly difficult, but well worth it. It was sturdier and much wider than our previous one. I set it up off to the side and would use it regularly this weekend. Jade would too, which is very out of the ordinary for my camping guests! 

Without Jenna, I always struggle to get a fire started. She has a way with fires that I just can't explain. Maybe I get too impatient, or maybe I’m just uneducated about the physics of it all, but I can not get a fire going the way Jenna can and her absence is very loud on trips that she has to miss. I finally got the fire going with just a little sunlight to spare. 

Two small gear changes that I need to highlight are the fans that Jenna and I had purchased several trips back, but haven't had the chance to truly use quite yet. Folding fans. These box fans fold in half and pack down pretty well, be open up to move a bunch of air. We bought them back before the weather got hot enough to really use them, but I used one while sleeping during my April trip with my cousin and her family. These fans run on D batteries or can be plugged in. I didn’t really even understand how game changing they could be until this May trip when it got to be a little warm. 

Jade and I just carried them around with us as we moved around the site. It was a great way to stay cool and help keep the bugs away. So they stayed with us while we watched the fire for a bit and at 11pm, when Jade and Delilah retired to bed, she took her fan and left me with mine. I sat up for another two hours, got the campsite ready for nighttime, watched the most beautiful stars that I had ever seen, and then finally around 1am, crawled into my bed. 

Like most trips, I couldn’t make it through the night without having to get up to pee. I was up around 3am to use the pop up potty, and I was pleasantly surprised that Delilah wasn’t the least bit disturbed by my shuffling. She was definitely aware, but stayed by her mom’s side like a good girl. Around 7am, I got up for real and started the coffee. Since Jade and Delilah seemed like they were sleeping in, I got to spend some good quality time with myself. The morning on the second day of camping, especially if I'm the only one up, is the time when I can count on myself to actually relax. I drink my coffee, I watch the world around me wake up, and I do absolutely nothing; and love it. Even in the summer months, mornings are nice and cool too, so I don’t sweat, even if I do peeter around a bit. 

Once Jade arose, I got breakfast started. Using the grill that Kevin had given me at the end of the last trip, I was able to fry bacon and eggs fairly easily. For this trip, I used liquid eggs in the carton instead of bringing my own shelled eggs to camp. It was so much easier. I could probably prepare my own instead of buying it by the carton. After breakfast I did the dishes (again, I can’t sit still) and then we both freshened up.

We got in the car and drove into the next town and went to the Dollar General. One thing about camping, you can almost always guarantee that there will be a Dollar General (or 6 of them) within a reasonable driving distance of whatever campground you’re in. In the past 3 years of camping at various campgrounds, this rule has never let me down. 

One thing we can’t always guarantee is that there will be firewood to buy near camp. This campground sold it, but it was wildly expensive and not all that great quality. So we took our chances and drove around for HOURS looking for some. We finally found a house that was selling some out of a shed in the front yard. There was no one around and they had an honor system for payment. It would be easy to take advantage, but we had experienced so much bad luck this trip already (rain, site size, no firewood) that I didn’t want to take any chances. We drove back to the dollar store where we had gotten a few supplies before our long trek for firewood and got some cash, then went back to the house that sold firewood and over paid for a huge bundle. We loaded up the car and took our spoils back to camp. 

My first chair paralegal at work, Laura, bought me a Georgia State Park passport the last time that she was camping. The idea is to get the passport stamped every time you go to a Georgia state park. I think the system is for children, but I love it. I stopped at the general store at the park on our way back in to have my passport stamped and to buy a sticker. I have been collecting park stickers for my car for a long time now and have yet to actually put any ON my car. I may not. My car is about a year old and I don’t love the idea of stickers on it. So I’m going to keep collecting them and then decide later. 

Back at camp I wasted no time falling right back into being a busy little bee. I changed the ice in the cooler, ate a protein bar, organized the kitchen bin, and organized the tool bin. Jade brought some chalk hair dye for Delilah, so while she started working on dying her ears rainbow colors (a big hit with neighboring children), I got a fire started; a much easier task than the first attempt the night before. 

We settled in and I attempted to actually relax. I pulled out the guitar to play. Without Jenna, I have to carry entire songs. My fingers blistered faster and my voice cracked a lot sooner than it normally does. I was clearly out of practice as I wasn't really playing much at home. This was the first time that I realized I have been burning the candle at both ends and not really taking time to relax or enjoy any of my old hobbies. This needed to change and it wasn’t going to change this particular weekend. 

I tried playing games on my phone, but got bored pretty quickly. Eventually, Jade announced that she had brought along some string to make friendship bracelets; a classic camping activity that I had never really thought to do. We set up opposite each other on the standing grill that was on site. We tied off to the grill and started tying knots in the strings until they resembled something that could maybe look like a bracelet if you squint. We decided to conceal them from each other until we were finished so we could have a whole reveal. This was honestly the most fun part of this entire trip and my frustrations with myself about not being able to relax kind of dissolved away. 

After the giggle-fest that was arts and crafts, we decided to take the dog on a walk and explore the campground a little bit more. We came across an entirely different comfort station than the one that we had been using. This one was much closer and easier to get to. 

Back at camp, we tried our hand at whittling, but in fear of injury, I cut that off almost immediately. We moved our chairs around to try and get a bit further from the fire without being at a weird angle. The campsite had a lifted part directly in the middle (part of why set up was so hard the day prior) and we set our chairs there, allowing us to look downward toward the fire with our backs to the road for a bit of privacy. 

We let it get dark around us as the sun set. And it was the most beautiful sunset I’d ever seen. We got as many pictures of it as we could. Once the sun was gone for the day I walked to the closer comfort station and got a shower. For some reason, a day 2 shower just feels so much better than anything else. I enjoyed it immensely and then headed back to camp. 

Jade and I made hotdogs for dinner and sat up chatting for a good bit. We talked about our pasts, our futures, our jobs. It was nice to have company different from what I was used to, though I missed Jenna’s camp contributions so much; namely the fire/cooking. Jade and Delilah went to bed before me again, leaving me to myself.  I got the site cleaned up and watched the stars again for a while before following them to bed. I was asleep faster than I expected around midnight. 

I woke up at 6am on that third day and walked to the comfort station, packing already on my mind. We had the site for another night, but I considered leaving early to avoid the forecasted rain. It was a holiday weekend so we were both off work on Monday and would love the extra day at home. 

While at the comfort station I also started making mental notes about gear. I wanted to make some changes,  but not as many as I usually do. One thing I did differently for this trip that I hadn’t done in the past was put bug repellant, hand sanitizer, and wipes in each bin. I wanted to keep that system, except remove the bug repellent and start an entirely separate bug repellent bin (it ends up being a bag). 

I got back to camp excited to redo my bins, but started a fire first. Jade and Delilah got up and went on a brief walk. Jade kept working on the bracelets that she had been working on the day prior while I messed around with gear. 

I took out my clipboard and started making and remaking lists. Most of my bins stayed exactly the same: I have my tools in one, kitchen stuff in another, a bin for electronics for the tent, a bin for electronics for outside the tent, and a bag for the tarps. I hated that the tarps were in a bag instead of a bin, but I wouldn’t get that fixed for a few more trips. I also played around with the idea of getting rid of the cot finally. This would be the cot’s last trip. When I got home, it went straight to the dumpster. 

I also contemplated the food that we bring out to camp. We always end up letting food go bad, eating too much, or bringing so much of it home. I decided that from now on I would focus on one meal. Either lunch or dinner for Saturday. Every other meal could be snacks. There’s no reason to bring six full meals out to camp for just two people. This would help improve our prep time as well as our car packing. 

Another piece of gear that Jenna and I both take issue with is the glass top table. It folds flat and is fairly easy to pack, but it is just a matter of time before it shatters and makes a huge mess. Eventually, I planned to get hiking tables that would fold down into a bin or our hiking backpacks. 

Around 2:30 that afternoon, we decided to leave as the weather was looking a bit threatening. It had been almost a year, but I was still pretty traumatized by the Great Flood of August 2021. So we wasted no time getting out of there. 

I got Jade and Delilah home and then had to lug all my camping gear into my second floor storage unit before even getting home. Unpacking from camping trips had become such an exhausting chore that I dreaded it every time. It has been the reason that I skipped trips. In my old home I had a floor level garage so I didn’t need a storage unit and I didn’t have to take much up stairs. In my current place, I had to make an entirely separate stop at my storage unit, fight for parking, load up a cart and take everything upstairs (with an elevator - thank God), THEN take remaining gear home up to my second floor condo. Eventually I stopped keeping a whole lot at the storage unit and would instead pile as much as I could in my bedroom closet. So I would hauling these bins up the stairs every time. It was terrible. 

Between failing to relax at camp and the work that awaited me when I got home, I was starting to lose my love of camping. It was a scary feeling as I had spent almost three years investing time and money into this hobby and I wanted so desperately to get the joy of it back. I tried spending time between this trip and my next one making plans and improvements. Usually this is how I find that joy again. 

Stay Dirty, 

Stone. 

[sticks-and-stone]

Ichetucknee Springs Campground

April 15, 2022 through April 17, 2022

This trip was interesting because for the first time in a long time I was camping with someone other than Jenna. I went to Ichetucknee Springs Campground with my cousin Stacia, her husband Kevin, and their three kids: Adrianna (Aidy), Mckenna (Kenna) and Jackston (Jack). This would be the first time that I am camping with children. I was nervous but excited. This campground was not a part of the State Park, so there was no direct access to the Ichetucknee River, but it was only 5 minutes from the state park. We planned to just drive over to the park on Saturday so that we could float the river. 

My friend M wanted to come hang out but not camp, so she drove with me on Friday. We weren’t sure what the dinner situation was going to be and I’m not sure M would eat anything that was cooked at camp, so we stopped for Mcdonalds on the way out.

When we got to the campground the first thing we noticed was that they had a bunch of dogs and cats just roaming around loose. I knew this from the website. Each dog and cat has a whole profile. Most of them belong to the campground, but some were dogs from neighboring residences that just wander in on a regular basis. 

We found the campsite fairly quickly and parked my car off to the side. We got out and greeted my family before checking out the site. It was a dirt floor and spanned nearly a fifty yard diameter. There was no electricity and one picnic table. I found a spot in the back of the site opposite of Stacia’s tent and started setting up. 

My cousin made spaghetti over a propane stove top for her kids. We didn’t eat with them since we had eaten on the way in, but it smelled and looked amazing. As it got dark we made smores with the kids, which was a cluster of trial and error and predictably sticky. The kids were 8, 8, and 4. So the sticky marshmallows combined with the dirt floor was truly a sight to be seen. Stacia had bought some wooden roasting sticks, but they only seemed to make the whole mess worse. I made note to use my metal (easily wiped off) ones for the next night.  

Eventually the kids got wipe-baths and were sent to bed. M and I stayed up until about 11 chatting with Stacia and Kevin. When M drove home I stayed up with my cousin for about another hour. It had been nearly two years since we saw each other so we had plenty to catch up on. I enjoy spending time with a lot of my extended family now that I am an adult. I have always been the baby of the family and I’ve worked really hard to prove myself a contributing adult. This was the first time that Stacia and Kevin got to see that. Stacia is about 8 or 9 years older than me so she was always a “big cousin” of sorts. It’s nice to finally feel like a peer. 

Around midnight I retired to my tent. This was only the second time I was using it and the first time that I was using it alone. I had full control over how to set it up. I was using an air mattress this time since that last trip with Jenna made me realize it was far more comfortable than the cot. I slid the bed into the corner and set up a hiking chair at the foot of it so that I would have some place to sit down. I emptied the hiking bag and laid out gear next to the chair so that everything would be accessible. I placed my shoes by the door along with the emergency care kit so that I would have easy access from the outside. I put the floats that I would be using the next day on the porch and I placed my “tent bin” next to the bed to use as a nightstand. I was fighting off the tail end of a cold, so I had all of my medicine and cough drops in the bin.   

I’m a fairly hard sleeper when I’m camper so I’m not normally bothered by noisy neighbors. Therefore, I did not hear it when Stacia got up at 4am to go across the street to yell at some neighbors for blasting music. I was completely shocked when she told me about it the next morning. Her kids corroborated the story as apparently they kept everyone up all night. I did hear the donkey from the campground petting zoo at the other end of the park though. Or I dreamt it. I’m not too sure. 

I woke up around 7am on Saturday, feeling incredibly refreshed unlike my family. Regardless, Stacia and her kids were up at about the same time as me. Kevin stayed in bed because he lost so much sleep thanks to the noisy neighbors. To kill some time and to make sure Kevin was rested, Stacia and I took the kids to the big swing that the campground had and to pet the animals at the little petting zoo. 

The petting zoo was really pretty awesome. They had food out so that you could hand-feed them. They had a couple donkeys, a few goats and one GIANT free-range pig. 

We also explored the rec hall/bathrooms. I was okay popping a squat behind my tent to pee, but the little kids needed a bit more than that and I was not sharing a pop-up potty with three kids and two other adults. I hadn’t replaced the one I retired last trip anyway. 

Once everyone pottied and washed up, we headed back to camp where Kevin was awake and drinking coffee. I had myself another cup and soon after, M showed up with an energy drink for me. I didn’t even realize how much I was going to need the extra energy. 

We broke out Stacia’s propane stove again and got to work on pancakes for the kids. And then I played games with the kids (mom had sent some yard games with us) until my sister in law, Angelina showed up with my brother, her new boyfriend, and all their kids (including Angelina’s baby, Cathan.) 

Angelina was also about 6 months pregnant with her fourth child (Chris’s second) so all together, we had Aidy (8), Kenna(8), Jack(4), Madison(7), Owen(5), Cathan (1). As for the adults, we had Me, M, Stacia, Kevin, Michael, Angelina, and Chris. We had a full party and now the heat of the day was rolling in and we were ready to float down the river at the state park. 

I don’t know why, or whose idea it was (probably mine) to inflate the rafts at camp and drive them to the park, but that's what we did. Stacia and Kevin had a giant 4-person raft that was bigger than the bed of Kevin’s truck. M and I had our regular raft, and everyone else had their own too. All these people and all their rafts piled into three cars with the rafts in the bed of Kevin’s truck and drove off for the spring. 

Then disaster struck. As we were following Kevin, the leader of our caravan, down to the park entrance, the rafts started to blow in the wind and come untied. Ultimately, he dragged his 4-person raft for several hundred feet and ripped a hole the size of a basketball right through it. He pulled over and assessed the damages and cursed at himself. M and I piled the remaining intact rafts into my Subaru and we kept on going. Kevin and Stacia would rent rafts at the park for themselves and their kids. 

We arrived at the park and got in line for the float. It didn’t take long to begin heading to the top of the river. It wasn’t a long hike out - maybe ¾ mile. But the kids became very whiny about having to carry their own rafts. The adults ended up doubling up on rafts and carrying them to the water. 

Once at the water we began the excruciating process of getting all of these people and kids into the icy cold water. We put Michael, Chris, and Kevin in first and then each kid. My niece Madison refused to get in at first and had a full panic attack about it. I was able to talk her down and get her into the water and onto a tube. We tied everyone together with a rope from my camping gear and we were off! 

The Itch has always been one of my favorite floats even when I was a kid. I was stoked to be back on this river and in typical “me” fashion, I decided to go down the river without a float. I feel more in control that way. What I didn’t think about was how many of these small children were going to want to do exactly what I was doing. 

It started with Owen (5). He hopped right out of his tube in his little life vest and was very content holding on to the side of Michael’s tube and letting the current drag him. He’s always been a water baby. Since he was clearly not going to use it, we used his tube as a “provisions tube”, a name dubbed by my brother Michael. I dropped my glasses in there, we put towels and clothing in it that people had peeled off, and the bag of snorkels that Stacia had brought for her kids. It was perfect. 

Not wanting to be outdone by a 5 year old, Aidy (8) hopped out of her tube and into the water. She immediately regretted it. She screamed as the cold water engulfed her and as she popped back up to the surface she was crying. She was wearing a mask and a snorkel and when M told her that it was just like a swimming pool, she yelled through her snorkel, “THIS IS NOTHING LIKE A SWIMMING POOL” We all got a great laugh out of it. 

I swam over and helped her back into her tube. Her twin sister, Kenna decided that she could do it. She gave no warning and exited her tube by flipping it over onto herself. A reckless and silly act that normally would be effective and funny, resulted in the tube tied next to hers to flip as well. That tube was our provisions tube. I hurried to gather the now floating objects only to remember that the glasses I took off earlier were in that tube! I grabbed Aidy’s mask from her and started frantically looking under water for them. They were the only pair I had with me this weekend and the only pair that I owned with the sunglasses clip. But they did not float and the current was far too strong, so they were gone and I was not about to make this entire group of family and friends stop to help me look for them. 

Soon after the provisions tube debacle we arrived at the take out spot and started corralling the children out of the water, letting the air out of the tubes, and heading back up to the parking lot. It was only about a 2 minute walk. Way better than the ¾ mile we did coming in. We got the cars loaded up and headed back to the campsite. 

M and I arrived back first, followed by Michael, Angelina, Chris, and their kids. And soon after, Kevin, Stacia, and their kids. So many kids. Obviously, everyone was starving after a half day on the water. So Angelina busted out what is now my favorite camp snack. She took an entire pack of Hawaiian rolls, cut them open as one unit, and stuffed them with lunch meat, cheese, and mayo. Absolutely delicious and required nothing more than a napkin.

After the very satisfying meal, Stacia and I took all the kids and Angelina down to the petting zoo again so that Madison, Owen, and Cathan could see the animals that we got to see earlier in the day. They absolutely loved it, though I think Madison enjoyed the swing more than anything. She loved having her cousins push her on it and give her so much attention. 

We got back to the campsite and of course everyone was hungry again (there’s not much to do with kids at camp during the day except eat. Pro tip: bring lots of snack options) so we roasted hotdogs over the fire. The bigger kids roasted their own like the adults, but we had to assist the two younger boys. It was a fast and easy meal that also required very few dishes. 

The kids all played in the dirt together for a while and with the toys my mom had sent with me. It was very sweet to see so many of the next generation together. Michael and I, and our older brother Joe, spent so many weekends with Stacia, her sister, and our cousins from Miami. We would do Christmas, Easter, Mother Day, various birthdays and later, funerals and weddings. But rarely do the next generation get to spend time, especially in the wake of this pandemic. I knew that my aunts and Mom would be so proud and my grandmother (RIP) would be over the moon. 

Once the kids had worn themselves out even further, Angelina and Chris took Cathan home. Soon after, Michael started making moves to get his two, Madison and Owen, ready to go. He intended it to be a slow process and that seemed to make it worse for Madison. She threw a grade A tantrum over a toy she swears that Aidy gave her. Aidy said she just meant for her to play with it while she was here, but Madison apparently misunderstood (or more likely, lied) about what she meant. So she was refusing to leave unless she could take the toy with her. Michael was overly tired too and didn’t handle it the way he knew how. Instead of taking the kids to the rec hall to get showered before the 1.5 hour drive home, he just took home dirty. There was no way he was going to get them to shower with Madison acting like that. I felt a little bad for my brother, but I was mostly glad to see the number of kids at camp halved. 

As a reward for being patient with Madison and Owen we made smores again with Stacia and Kevin’s 3 kids. M stuck around to help out and to keep me company while Stacia and Kevin took the kids to go shower. They had literally played in dirt all day, after all. 

Once they got back from showering, M took off to go home. She’d return in the morning with my car so that I could get all my gear home. After she left I stayed up as long as my body would allow (about 30 minutes) and then called it a night.  

I got up the next day before everyone else and started packing. I had the inside of my tent emptied by the time everyone else got up. When the kids and Stacia finally appeared, the kids immediately had some cereal and started helping their parents clean up the inside of the tent. As organized as mine had been, theirs had been equally a disaster. Once the kids had done their part, Stacia took them to the swing and the petting zoo. The main purpose of this trip was for her kids to have their Easter. So I was tasked with playing Easter Bunny while Kevin continued to pack up their stuff. 

It felt strange being the Easter Bunny. So many of those weekends I used to spend with Stacia and the rest of the cousins were at Easter time. She and the other older cousins would take ME away and distract me so that some other adult could come and hide Easter eggs. The exact roll that I am now playing.

By the time the kids got back to camp with Stacia, the eggs were all hidden, my tent was taken down, and all my stuff piled up neatly awaiting its ride home. 

The kids hunted their eggs and sat down to open them up to see what goodies I had left for them. They shared their candy with me and M when she arrived soon after they finished collecting. 

As if we planned this timing, about the time M arrived and the kids finished gathering eggs, Kevin had finished packing his car. He gave me his propane grill as a thank you for helping him do this with his family. It was a kind gesture and it will soon become one of my favorite pieces of gear. 

With his car loaded, and now my car loaded, it was time for goodbyes and drives home. It was bitter sweet. Even typing this out months later I still miss the chaos, the disasters, and the memory of this trip. I hope to do it again before the kids get too old. And I hope to do it better. No dirt floor, mostly. And straps for my glasses. 

M and I were on the road home by noon. I was already scheming with Stacia about our next trip. I’m hoping to make this an annual thing. We made it back home and I dropped M off at her house and started the painstaking task of taking the gear to my storage unit and bringing my laundry and food upstairs to my second floor condo for further unpacking. 

Stay Dirty, 

Stone. 

[sticks-and-stone]

Stephen C. Foster State Park

February 11, 2022 through February 13, 2022

We set out to camp as much as possible in the state of Georgia this year. So naturally, our first trip of the year was to Stephen C. Foster State Park in Fargo, GA. This state park is considered the gateway to the Okefenokee Swamp making it much more “Florida” than many of the actual Florida trips that we have done. We got a later start than we intended to (who’s surprised?), but still got to camp around 530pm which gave us plenty of time to set up before the sun went down. Which was helpful because we just purchased a brand new, cabin-style, 8-person tent. We struggled with it, bickered a little, but we finally got it up as it began getting dark. It was more than we could have ever hoped for. The opportunities with this much space were endless and we were thrilled.

We didn’t have any firewood because the office was closed when we arrived, so we didn’t get a chance to buy any. We figured we’d stop in and get some on Saturday morning when we checked in. But that left us foraging for scrap firewood around the damp campsite that first night and we simply could not get a fire going. So we gave up and just finished unloading the car and setting up the campsite. We put up the pop up canopy and the lights around the canopy legs. We took all of the bins out of the car. We left the coolers in the trunk and used the car as a pantry the entire weekend. This practice will become a permanent one. 

We skipped the pop-up potty since the comfort stations at this park were the best that we had ever seen and relatively close to our campsite. They had individual rooms with a toilet and a shower in each. We didn’t have to share space with anyone. 

Jenna’s air mattress was unreliable so I brought mine and the cot. It will be several more trips before I pull the plug on the cot, but I began to question the need for it at all around this time. It was bulky and hard to pack and set up. Plus it wasn’t really all that comfortable. I gave Jenna the choice for night one to have either the cot or the air mattress and she chose the air mattress, leaving me on the cot. 

The first night was chilly, but not too cold; the perfect sleeping temperature. Some time during the night a raccoon got to one of our bins on the folding table and knocked it off. The bin proved sturdy though and did not open. This was a major selling point for me on this new ish bins system. 

We woke up at 7 the next morning and got started right away with making coffee with our new kettle and single burner butane stove. Coffee has become a good indicator of how far we’ve come with our camping skills. We’ve gone from having to start an entire fire to heat up water to using the single burner wood burning stove to this butane set up. The butane setup was fast, clean, and it packs down to nearly nothing. The recurring cost of the butane is a little bit annoying, but it really is worth the time saved each morning. And it also allows me to easily get coffee without sweating over a stubborn fire or waiting for Jenna to wake up so that she can help rescue it. 

While we drank our coffee we took in the area around us a bit more. Usually we get to camp after dark on Friday’s and even though we got here a little bit earlier the night before, we spent what daylight we had left setting up camp. Either way, we hardly ever get to take in the scenery around us on the first night. So those Saturday mornings are spent finally taking it all in. and this was one beautiful campground.  

Once we were caffeinated, we headed back to the front office to get checked in and to buy some firewood. The office was cute and had a little camp/gift shop so I meandered around a bit. Once we got checked in, I bought some firewood to last us the next two days. In typical state park fashion, the firewood was overpriced and damp. We don’t love to use the firewood sold by the parks for this reason, but sometimes we get lucky with locals selling firewood nearby and sometimes we don’t. This time, we did not. 

We came back to the campsite and I got started on making breakfast: bacon and eggs. Using the butane burner proved difficult; I had to prop up the frying pan on something to get it sit level. But it was still significantly better than cooking over a fire or using the wood burning stove.

We spent the better part of the day organizing gear. I love to obsess over storage bins, accessibility, ease-of-packing, and lists. Every camping trip ends with me changing up the packing system in some way, big or small. I always find ways to do it better and this has been an important part of the way I camp since that first trip in September of 2019. We had gone from nothing, to a giant bin with everything, to smaller bins, back to a large bin, back to smaller bins. I shuffle the gear around from bin to bin so many times that Jenna has just stopped paying attention whenever I show her my latest system. This keeps me busy at camp too when I would otherwise start to feel bored.

Jenna allows me to indulge and spend a lot of time at camp playing with my packing system and for that I am grateful. I’m sure she uses that time to actually relax; something with which I heavily struggle. I always swore that one day I would get it right and leave it alone and start actually relaxing when I’m out at camp, but I don’t even believe it anymore. The feeling of needing to do something is far too strong and I feel anxious if I’m not being productive. 

For this trip, I changed up the bins only slightly and ended up with:

Large Bin = RETIRED COMPLETELY

Medium Bin - Tools, but fewer - retired a lot of them 

Small Bin - kitchen 

Small Bin - inside electronics - no electricity needed

Basket - Electronics - electricity needed 

Crate - Folding Fans, Misc.  

While I was needlessly messing around with the gear, Jenna finally got the fire started. The A.M. hours finally hit double digits so I started drinking beer despite the park’s policy banning alcohol. We’ve never had an issue before so long as we’re not wild or disruptive. Jenna doesn’t drink these days so I’m left alone to catch a buzz. Sometimes, while camping, I find that I drink too much. Usually it’s because I use beer to stave off boredom and try to  induce relaxation. It’s a vicious cycle and by this point, I was beginning to hate having the alcohol with us at all.  

Just when I was starting to catch a nice buzz and Jenna was moments away from getting the fire going perfectly, one of the park volunteers called over to us. I had forgotten to change out the temp tag on my car for the permanent one that they had given me at check-in. I swapped the tag out, but this lady was feeling chatty and talked to the two of us for a good bit. Just long enough for me to lose my secret buzz and for Jenna to lose the fire. She had to start all over. I did too. 

We gave up on the fire and went inside our new tent that had thrived during its first night in the woods. We wanted to organize the gear that was stored there. It was lovely to finally have a space where we could stand, walk around, and not be hunched over the entire time. We had a nice screened in porch attached to it that was plenty big enough for us each to have a chair out there. This was one of the best investments in our camping set up that we had made so far. It really took things up a notch.

We went back outside and I got a protein bar to help ward off having a bit too much to drink. Jenna went and took a shower in the very nice facilities while I stayed and tended to the fire while eating snacks. We’re trying to be a little healthier with the snacks that we bring out to camp with us. This time we stuck to pretzels, hummus, and grapes. We figured something of actual nutritional value would be a good idea for once. 

When Jenna got back from her shower I took my turn. I was not disappointed. These showers were large, warm, and private. It was everything we had always wanted in camping facilities. I took my time, savoring the experience. When I finally made my way back to camp, it started raining. Which wasn’t an issue for us anymore since we had this lovely, large tent with plenty of porch space. We both set up on the porch and read silently for a while. I eventually moved to the air mattress to be a little more comfortable. I lost all focus and ended up napping instead. I woke around 5 and the rain had stopped. 

Jenna was back outside trying to start a fire in a now even wetter fire ring. I went out to help her but ended up causing more harm than good, something I do whenever I try to help with fires. So I decided to go walk around the campground. 

We had zero cell service at this campground. We weren’t mad about it, unplugging is part of the fun, but whenever boredom sets in it becomes a bit annoying to be so disconnected. As I was walking around it was getting dark around me. I enjoyed seeing other camper’s set ups and getting ideas for my own. I saw lots of children running off their last bouts of energy after dinner. I miss those days of being a carefree child at a campground. Playing flashlight tag, manhunt, and hide and seek. Never worrying about what gear goes in what bin. THAT'S the camping I miss. 

Somewhere along my walk I found a tiny little bit of cell service and was able to get back into touch with the real world. It didn’t last long, but it lasted long enough to keep my snap streaks and check in. It wasn’t long lived, but the sparse cell service was finally replaced by an incredible night sky above me. This park was “Dark Sky Certified”; the only park in the region with that title. And boy, did it earn it. I could see more stars than I ever knew existed.   

I made my way back to camp and Jenna and I played the guitar and sang for a bit. I don’t love being that camp neighbor, but it really is the only time that the two of us get to play music together. It didn’t last too long though as I was getting exhausted and turned into bed early. This time on the air mattress. 

It rained overnight which just makes sleeping that much more enjoyable, especially in a tent that doesn’t leak or collect condensation on the inside at all. I slept for a solid 12 hours that night and woke up refreshed and feeling amazing. I love the quality of sleep I get while camping. I don’t know what it is, but I rarely have a hard time sleeping when I camp. 

When I finally got up at 830, we started packing. We typically pack very slowly on Sundays. We take our time, try not to sweat, and just make sure we do a good job getting all of our gear packed back away. Jenna usually takes charge of packing the car, especially on these more luxurious trips when we bring all the gear, but I get to make sure all the gear is in the right bins. 

While packing up at the end of the weekend, I use that time to retire some gear. I’ll either throw it away if it’s no longer functional or I will “black bag it” which basically means putting it in a designated bag separate from all the other gear with the intention of not returning it to the gear at all once I get home. Sometimes I will use the items in my home, give them away, or donate them, depending on the item. This weekend we retired the following items:

1. The pop up potty. This game changing piece of gear was the love of my life. Having a bathroom on site that was private, made a world of difference to me on many of our trips. The potty though, had seen better days. It was rusting, starting to smell, and ripping at some of the seams. I bid it a very solemn farewell, thanked it for its years of service to me, and promised to replace it with one that has rust-proof poles. 

2. My Hammock. I barely used this thing ever. It was hard to find a site with trees the right distance apart and when I finally did get to set it up, I barely used it. This item wasn’t broken or dysfunctional in any way, so retiring it simply meant taking it home and keeping it in storage. This freed up a lot of space for me in my bins though. 

3. The wood burning camp stove. I’d had it about a year and replaced it with the butane stove. Retirement came naturally for it. I offered this piece of gear to my brother who was just starting out again with camping and wanted to build a non-recurring-cost kit. This was perfect for him. 

4. My Pot. Okay. Guys. replace your pot from time to time. Made it for about a year and a half. Nearly 20 camping trips. It was gross. I don’t care how much you wash it, replace your pot every few years. Jesus. 

When the packing was done, we took off. Bid our new favorite state park adieu and promised to come back soon. And we would! Or at least I would. We got home around 2pm which gives me enough time to unload at my storage unit before going home. I hate that errand, but it keeps all of our gear organized and safe. 

Stay Dirty, 

Stone. 

[sticks-and-stone]

Seranova Tract

November 19, 2021 through November 21, 2021

Not a whole lot to report from this trip. I didn’t take great notes or photos and of course I’m writing about it several months later, so my memory is a bit off. The major significance of this trip was trying out the new tent. I don’t think I retired any old gear or had anything new beyond the tent. This trip was a good example of leaving Friday after work, prepping very little, and having a very relaxing time in the woods for a couple of days regardless. 

Since the temperatures this time of year are mild, we stayed at yet another free site through the SWFWMD (Southwest Florida Water Management District). This time, we tried a completely new location: Seranova Tract. We hadn’t stayed here before so we really didn’t have any clue what to expect. We just packed the car and gave it a go. We didn’t arrive on site until 9:30pm on Friday night. We both had to work during the day, so we didn’t hit the road until after 5pm. 

Despite a late arrival, we got our tents set up and a fire started within an hour, which I’m pretty sure is a record for us. Jenna was setting up the same hiking tent that she has been using for a few trips. I just purchased a hiking tent of my own just the week prior. My job had a Halloween costume contest and I won an Academy Sports gift card. The tent is small; just large enough for me to lay down, but it packs so small and I can fit a tarp in the bag with it. Coupled with the new tent was the new gear from last trip: the sleeping bag and the sleeping pad and I found myself with the perfect sleep system. 

Jenna and I stayed up until just past midnight. We made tea, had a few snacks (meat sticks, dried fruit - we didn’t pack any coolers this time). We played cards for a bit as we always do. Once it was time for bed, I decided to leave my hiking backpack hung up on a tree nearby so that I wouldn’t attract bugs or animals toward where I was sleeping (had food in the hiking kit). Overnight, I stayed clothed. It wasn’t unbearably cold, but it was chillier than it had been for previous trips and though the sleeping bag provided some insulation, it wasn’t perfect, so i kept my layers on.  

I slept hard like always on the first night and woke up around 730 the next morning; before Jenna. I used the single burner stove to boil water for coffee and grits and cleaned up a trash bag that a raccoon ransacked overnight. Once Jenna emerged from her tent, she got the fire started for us. We hung out by the fire for a long while just discussing our packing strategies. Eventually, it began to warm up and we began to start peeling off the night’s layers. These late fall trips are slow moving while we let our old bones adjust to the temperatures. 

Once warm, I decided to take down my tent and sleep system for the day (as we would on a backpacking trip) and  see how difficult it would be to repack my pack and do it all again. Of course, while I was doing this, it began to rain a little so I used my liftgate and trunk as a work space. Unpacking and repacking my hiking backpack is one of my favorite things to do. I have yet to find consistency, so every time I do it, it's different than the last time. I am still playing around with what gear to bring, what to leave behind, and in what order to pack it all. Though a tedious task, it can be done at camp or at home, so it has become a favorite pastime of mine. 

This time, I placed my tent down inside my pack instead of on the bottom or top of the back. My sleeping bag was attached to the bottom of the pack with rope. So it acted as a storage location for the rope too. This proved to be a bad idea because the rope didn’t stay tied correctly during transport home, and my sleeping bag detached from the pack. I’ll be playing around with how this is packed for many many trips to come. But It’s fun to look back and see how things have evolved. 

The hiking backpack that I was using for this trip was still that camo hand-me-down from Jenna. It was probably older than me. The inside lining was peeling and getting all over my stuff, and a bunch of the zippers didn’t even work anymore. During this trip, I broke a very important zipper; rendering the entire pack useless. Luckily, Jenna was about to upgrade her own pack, so I would simply take yet another hand-me-down from her for the next trip. For the remainder of this trip, I would just continue to use the broken one. 

Once the pack was repacked and secured to the best of my ability, I set my tent back up. This time, I moved to the other side of the campsite so that I could get the corners staked into the ground better. I positioned myself between the tree that held my pack and Jenna’s tent. 

 I also hung a clothes line behind my tent. We did this during the last trip too, but I think it should become a regular part of our site set up. It's very handy for so many different reasons: 

Clothes line - obvious - drying out wet clothes

Can drape a tarp/sheet for added privacy on site

Works as a net for yard games - great for when we have kids with us

Base for an A frame tarp for rain coverage.

Jenna and I really wanted to get a hike in on this trip. She had purchased a compact day pack that she wanted to try out and I was just getting a little bored of camping trips where we just sit at camp the entire time. So we mapped out a great little hike to a nearby lake and waited out the rain. 

While we waited, we decided to make an A-frame canopy over our picnic table so that we could have a covered area to hangout. We tied one end of the paracord to a tree, the other end to another tree, and moved the picnic table in between the two trees. Next, we draped the tarp over the paracord and started anchoring the sides down by pulling the paracord from opposite corners until it was taught and then staked the paracord into the ground. It turned out pretty good considering this was our first time doing it.

The A frame was up, the skies were still gloomy, and we made some tea to calm our restlessness. By the time we were done with our tea, the sky seemed clear enough to head out. So we did. We walked a total of a mile and half (not too long) and it took us about 30 minutes (a lifetime). We had to climb over some downed limbs, around some puddled mud, and under some low hanging trees. At one point, the path was so washed out from the rain, we decided to take a shortcut through the loosely packed forest. We got a little lost, but it wasn’t bad. I definitely need to improve some backcountry hiking skills like navigation, but as far as baby hikes go, this one was good.

We arrived back at the site and the rain seemed to be done, so we made some rice for dinner and sat up drinking by the fire for a bit.  We played our fair share of cards (gin probably) and then got sleepy and ready for bed early like we always do on night 2. Jenna got a wild hair and decided to sleep in her hammock. Which is braver than I would have been. She figured that since it wasn’t unbearably hot or buggy, why not? Needless to day, when I awoke the next day to find her still in the hammock, I was impressed. 

The next morning we got up early, made a light breakfast, some coffee, and made our departure. We drove around the campground a little bit first to scope out what we missed coming in at dark on Friday. This campground, nearly 4 hours away, was really nice. For a free site, it was well worth the drive down. I can’t wait to stay here again and explore this part of the state so much more. 

Stay Dirty, 

Stone

[sticks-and-stone]

Hampton Tract

October 29, 2021 through October 31, 2021

Before I jump into this trip, I just need to express my absolute DISDAIN for people who abuse campsites. Particularly the free ones like this. We use these Water Management District sites all the time and for free sites, they are always surprisingly well-kept. A lot of that is due to the people who use it cleaning up behind themselves. When we got to this site at Hampton Tract, however, it was wrecked. Glass and plastic everywhere, diapers in the fire pit, things left on the table, etc. It was completely disappointing to see that this site had been so poorly cared for. I spent way too much of this weekend walking around the site picking up other people’s garbage. Be better. 

Anyway, another free, SWFWMD site for this trip. This time we revisited Hampton Tract. We had been here before in 2019 for our second trip, so this time we had improved our skill sets and gear exponentially for our 17th trip. I was eager to see how we’d do here. We arrived after dark (who’s surprised) and had to get started on setting up camp right away because it was raining a little. I still had my tiny, child-sized dome tent, so I was worried about rain proofing. I figured I could at least make it through the night and then tend to it in the morning. 

Once again, we were out here trying to get a little bit closer to self-sustaining backpacking, so I made due with my tiny dome. We still hadn’t replaced the big tent we lost in the Great Flood of August 2021, so I didn’t have much of a choice. Plus it got me used to sleeping in my own small space. 

We set up our tents and decided not to get the rest of the stuff out of the car until morning in case it started raining any harder and we had to rain proof the site. So we just started a fire in the pit. Which proved to be extremely difficult in the wet weather, but as always, we got it going and enjoyed our time by the fire before bed. We sat on hiking chairs and didn’t have a fireside table like we normally would. We were achieving minimalism.

This was the closest we got to “backpacking” yet. We were literally just working with what was on our backs. Even though our car was parked at the site, it felt good knowing that our packs could last us at least the night. I also had the opportunity to try out a few new gear pieces this trip. I bought an inflatable sleeping pad, a new sleeping bag, a day pack, a water bladder, reusable hand warmers, and glow in the dark waterproof playing cards (technically new for the last trip, but I had forgotten them that time. 

The new sleep system and water bladder is what completed my hiking backpack. I finally had a sleep system that was somewhat comfortable, and a water bladder big enough to hold my water for two days, but small enough to pack into the hiking backpack. The reusable hand warmers were to help us cut down on our single-use hand warmers for our winter trips. We won’t even get a chance to try those until later in the year or even next year. The playing cards were just an obvious upgrade. I bought them in Vegas. I was still using Jenna’s hand-me-down camp hiking backpack. It had its flaws but really served its purpose well for several trips. 

The next morning we got up and got to work on the fire again. We were eating only hiking food this trip just to prove that we could, so it was protein bars for breakfast. I boiled water over the fire (once we finally got it going) for coffee, but we struggled hard to get it started again and were even lightly bullied by a random neighbor. Annoying. 

Once I was caffeinated, I started working on waterproofing my tent. Jenna had a beautiful rain guard on her tent and was fine. I, however, got slightly damp the first night and wanted to make sure me and my stuff stayed dry the second night (more rain was coming). So I needed to get creative. 

The problem with waterproofing tents is that it's touchy. A simple tarp over the tent would do the trick, but if the tarp in any way touched the tent, water would come right through. So I needed to find a way to suspend the tarp over the top of the tent without allowing it to touch it. I tied one side of the tarp to a tree about 8 feet behind my tent. Then I attached two poles (old tiki torch poles) to the two front corners of the tarp and then pulled everything tight until it lifted up off of the top of my tent. It was wonky and sloppy, but it worked like a charm. 

With my tent secured and rain proofed, it of course stopped raining and began looking like a fairly beautiful day. So I spent some time puttering around the site and playing with gear. 

We had sorted everything into bins during our last trip and that sparked a new tier system for different types of camping. 

1. Backpacking - both of us now have fully sustaining packs with everything we need for a weekend. Hike-in sites mostly. 

2. Primitive Car Camping/Overlanding - We would be bringing our backpacking packs along with our camp kitchen stuff, chairs, tables, a pop up potty, and a cooler, but no electrical items. Drive up sites. 

3. Car Glamping - we would haul all of the above, plus electrical items and a pop up canopy. These are reserved for summer and deep winter trips. Drive up sites. 

This new system would allow us to streamline packing and planning and would make us more comfortable under certain conditions during the super hot and super cold trips without bringing any unnecessary items. Then we could save money, time, and energy during our more temperate trips and not have to bring so much stuff. We also open the door for some backpacking trips. But the ultimate reason for the gear improvement is so that we can limit the amount of prep we have to do each trip. Preparing for a trip consumes so much time and it makes it a little stressful to go. 

Since we only set up the tents the first night due to rain, I decided to pull some other stuff out of the car to make the site a bit more comfortable. Starting with the fireside table. This is a glass top round table that I have been using for firesides for a while now. It’s heavy, made of glass, and has to be packed very specifically in the car, which limits our packing ability. I need to replace this with something more durable and lighter, but focusing on our backpacking packs has been a bigger priority.  

We left pretty much everything else in the car and figured we would be back and forth from it to get items as we needed. This habit would prove unnecessary, but on the heels of the Great Flood of August 2021 we preferred to play it safe than sorry. 

We spent the rest of the day playing cards and drying out our stuff from the night before. One thing that came of The Great Flood was our patience with light rain. It rained on during our first night here at Hampton, but it was NOTHING compared to The Flood. So my sleeping bag, pad, and a few clothes were damp. No biggie. I hung a clothes line with some paracord (which I was beginning to desperately need to replenish in my pack) and dried everything out while Jenna and I spent a good part of the day playing cards and music. The young child across the campground field came over to us a few times, but he was no bother. We watched him and his grandfather play catch a lot. Their dog was annoying, but not too horrible, and the weather stayed pretty clear for the most part. 

This site had pretty decent tree coverage so we didn’t have the pop up canopy, but we did insist on bringing the pop up potty despite the campground having a port-a-potty. Those bathrooms are hit or miss and often kind of far away. This was way better. Our pop up potty was beginning to see its last days though. It was starting to rust and stain the blue fabric. Looked too much like blood for us. It isn’t the type of gear that I would want to get rid of then replace, I definitely wanted to wait until I had something to replace it before I threw it out. I have become far too comfortable using it.  

As the day got hotter, we decided to eat a little. We made rice and tuna out of our hiking backpacks. It wasn’t the most delicious meal, but it kept us fed and proved that we could in fact live out of our hiking backpacks. The satisfaction of doing that greatly outweighed the blandness of the meal. We also had sunflower and pumpkin seeds on hand too for general snacking. That helped a lot. 

We waited out the rest of the trip like that. Alternating between site maintenance and card playing. Of course a little drinking to help pass the time. All in all it was a mundane trip, but we proved our hiking backpacks well. We got some ideas for future trips, and most importantly we began a good process of gear organization and storage. 

When it was all said and done, I retired just one piece of gear: the dome tent. I promised myself that I would replace it before our next trip or finally get around to replacing the big tent. I would eventually do both. 

Stay Dirty, 

Stone.  

[sticks-and-stone]

Potts Preserve

September 24, 2021 through September 26, 2021 

To celebrate our two year camping anniversary, Jenna and I decided to stay at our first ever campground (as adults): Potts Preserve. This would be my third time at this park and Jenna’s second time. I was here in April of 2021 for my first full weekend solo trip without Jenna and of course we were here together in September 2019 for our first ever (as adults) camping trip together. I say “as adults'' because Jenna and I used to camp together when we were kids in high school. We didn’t camp during our college days at all and a pretty bad relationship of hers left us out of communication for a couple years after college. Potts Preserve is where we would rekindle our friendship and begin what would turn into a multi-year, goal-oriented hobby. This is an important park for us.

In the spirit of firsts at Potts Preserve, we decided to test out our hiking kits. We had been building them up for several trips by this point and working toward having completely self-sustaining kits so we could embark on some backcountry and hiking trips. Finally, We each had a backpack big enough and a tent. We still needed to figure out what we were going to do for water in our packs (bladder vs. bottles and filtration tabs) but for the purposes of this trip, we could do without and just use our jug system out of the car. These are drive-up spots, but we were hoping to get as close to a first-hand experience of using just our packs as possible. 

We arrived after dark, as we always do, and got stuck at the gate. The code given to us did not work and we had to call fish and wildlife to get a different code which luckily worked. Turns out this is a Pott’s problem. It happens all the time. Because we arrived after dark, we struggled to see the sites upon arrival. The one I wanted, the one I had solo last time, was occupied. But there was one at the closest end of the lot that was open. Perfectly private, plenty of tree coverage, and still relatively close to the bathroom. Please see this picture of Jenna fighting with the gate through the view of my new car’s rear camera: 

This was the first time that Jenna and I would be camping in separate tents. She in her second-hand hiking tent and me in my child size dome tent. We set our pop up tent up between our tents with our tents (kinda) facing each other, about 10 feet apart. 

That 4x4 child sized dome tent was the absolute worst. I had to lay down in it diagonally to fit and even still, I didn’t fit. Let alone all my stuff. It also definitely would not have survived rain. So I was lucky that we didn’t expect any. The only benefit of this tent is that it fit in my pack. I was still using that hand-me-down of a hand-me-down camouflage hiking pack. Which was a piece of gear I only hoped to use temporarily until I could afford to replace it. However, this would not be this tent’s last camping trip with me. 

We stayed up fairly late around the fire and chatted, reminisced about trips past, and planned for our camping future. Of course, we also played cards!

We got up early the next morning and decided to get out on the water with the kayaks. The last time I was at Potts, I found a great little boat ramp along the river to launch. We packed a snack bag and a couple beers and headed out. It was a strenuous upstream paddle and we made it a couple of miles before deciding to turn back. We spotted an ominous dark cloud. We wanted to get back to camp to waterproof our stuff. 

We got back to camp, water proofed our stuff, and then the cloud went away because of course it did. Grateful that we didn’t have to deal with rain, we decided to get dressed and go to town to buy some supplies. The only issue is that for the first time ever, we didn’t have a big enough tent to use to change. So I got creative and hung a tarp from a branch and created a wall to barricade ourselves from our neighbors off in the distance. It was sloppy, but it did the trick. 

We got changed, secured the site, and headed into town. Of course we had to fight with the gate a little bit first, but we were off in no time. We found the Dollar General (there’s always a Dollar General) and started with the supplies that we needed refilled; foil, paper towels, and things of that sort. Then we went looking at plastic bins. 

We have done the bin thing before and I don’t know why I’m so back and forth on them. At first, we started packing everything into one bin. This was a bad idea because whenever we needed anything we’d have to dig a bunch for it. Further, if anything leaked or spilled, every piece of gear would be affected. So I did away with the bin for about a year. Then we had that major disaster at the beach when all of our stuff got wet from the rain and the broken tent. So I decided during that trip that I wanted to go back to a bin system, but instead of one giant bin with everything in it, I wanted to use several smaller bins and categorize gear a bit. 

We ended up getting one medium size bin and two smaller bins. We also still had a large clear bin and the white crate to help store things. Hopefully this would be enough space for all of our stuff. I figured that if it wasn’t, I could go back out and get more bins. We divided up the gear as best we could: Large Bin: Electronics; Medium Bin: Tools and Misc. Gear; Small Bin: Kitchen Gear; Small Bin: Hammocks. We will spend the next few trips rearranging how we pack these bins, adding new bins, and overall perfecting our bin strategy, but this was a very good start.  

One of the downsides to doing weekend camping trips is that we show up to camp after dark so that we don’t have to take away from the work day and then we get up and typically start making moves to leave camp first thing Sunday mornings. This means that we really only have one full day to enjoy ourselves, work on camp, or go out on adventures. We make do, but it never feels like long enough. 

For this trip, however, it was nice to spend the majority of our time discussing and organizing our gear. Jenna is a good pal to bounce ideas off of and of course her opinion matters more than any one’s since it wholly affects her as well. After the trip in August resulting in total disaster, getting our shit together was exactly what we needed to do. 

Stay Dirty, 

Stone.  

[sticks-and-stone]

Huguenot Park

August 13, 2021 through August 14, 2021

I have been looking forward to writing about this trip since it happened, but I’m only just (about 5 months later) getting around to it. To say that this camping trip was a turning point for us would be an understatement. We learned some of the hardest lessons that you can learn while car camping and we are still recovering from some of the gear losses. By far, the biggest lesson that we had to learn was that it does not matter how good you are at car/tent camping, summer rain storms on a beach are not the place to put your skills to the test. 

We got to camp early on Friday for once. The month before, we had to skip our monthly trip because I suddenly had to move out of my apartment and find a new place to live. So this one was important to us. We chose Huguenot Park in Jacksonville, FL for a couple of different reasons. The first being that it was close to home. I had to get a storage unit for all my camping gear since I moved out of my old place. We decided to stay close to home while getting used to that change. Thankful that we did. 

It started out as a normal camping trip. We got to the site, figured out how we wanted to set up and then got to work. We were trying out a bunch of near gear including an outside electrical set up, new lights, and a completely new campsite organization system. I bought a couple of hanging organizers for the pop up canopy and the idea was that we were retiring the old system of living out of bins. What this meant was that every piece of gear we had with us was unpacked and stored somewhere on site instead of just staying in a bin while we were out there. Bad idea. But it looked really pretty. 

Another change we implemented on this trip was that we were in Jenna’s car instead of mine. Mine was starting to have some problems and we didn’t want to risk driving it out here. Jenna’s car also has way more cargo space and since this was a full electric campsite, we were bringing all of the gear. What this means is that we were starting out with an unorganized car. I love Jenna and she’s my favorite camping buddy, but she is notorious for having a messy car. This type of thing can lead to misplacing and completely losing gear, or in our case this weekend, not being able to pack up and leave camp quickly. The combination of car choice, and poor on-site gear organization lead us to the biggest disaster that we have had to face so far. 

The weather was fine at first. We got set up no problem, hung out at camp and perfected our site with no issue. We even walked down to the beach and swam in the water a little and watched the sunset there. By the time we were heading to bed, it had started raining a little off and on and the wind was starting to pick up. We weren’t concerned though. The weather forecast had called for rain and we have plenty of experience camping in the rain. We felt prepared. We even added a little bit of extra tarp coverage over the tent. 

The first night was a little bit intense but we survived it. The winds were strong and the rain was steady, but we had created a pretty good tarp system to rainproof the tent and we managed to stay dry. The issues arose when morning came and we began to feel too confident. That's the problem with being in nature. Nature doesn’t care about you. Nature will do what Nature does despite you. And you are never better than Nature.

The rain and wind continued off and on for a few hours that morning. We had to take cover in the tent as the rain and wind picked up. It was fine at first. Not ideal to be scrunched up in our small tent, but better than facing the elements directly. It was okay until the wind ripped down our lean-to tarp cover that we set up over the back of our tent. The back support pole fell over and brought the entire thing down until it was resting on the roof of the tent. Not good. The thing with tents is that the walls are water resistant or water-wicking. Meaning they repel water until something touches it and then the water can travel freely through it. Once our tarp fell on top of our tent water started pouring onto my cot by the bucket full. 

We thought as quickly as we could and moved everything to Jenna’s bed which seemed to be remaining dry. We also moved everything from up off of the ground in the tent. Water continued to pour in from on top of us, so I decided that I should remove the tarp from on top of the tent in an attempt to stop the water from coming in. The sides of the tent were now vulnerable too since our cots didn’t fully fit in the tent and they touched the sides, allowing water to enter the tent that way too. So the items on Jenna's bed were getting wet. While I was outside taking the tarp down (and shoving into the car) Jenna was doing her best trying to keep everything dry inside the tent. I got back in with her and noticed that even more water was getting in than before. I saw a rip in the corner where my cot was resting, a rip in the ceiling, and a rip along the zipper at the entrance. This tent was done and it was causing us more problems in this rain storm than it was solving. We only had one option left. Evacuate. 

We have never had to evacuate a site before. We knew that it was always a possibility and we were always sure to be prepared to do so, but mainly for human threats or animals, never weather. We never thought that we would be running loose gear from the tent to the car through mud, but here we were. 

First we moved the electronics. The items that would be completely destroyed if soaked. Next, our bedding and clothes. These were already soaked from wrongly assuming the cots were a safe place inside the tent, but they could be washed and dried no problem. Finally, we shoved whatever else would fit in the car. We had the car packed to the brim and we ourselves were drenched. We got in the front seat and finally had a moment to breathe. We assessed the situation and tried to lower our heart rates. We had almost everything just thrown in the car and most of it was completely soaked. The things we didn’t have in the car were the tent, the pop up, the outside string lights, the cots, and the kayaks. 

We figured the tent was a lost cause. But the cots inside could probably be dried out and saved later. They could act as a paper weight for the tent in the meantime so the broken tent didn’t go flying around the campground. I worried about the pop-up canopy and basically just hoped it wouldn’t come apart and fly around either. The kayaks were fine. I only worried about them getting stolen if we left the camp. And finally the rope lights. I had JUST bought those and this was the first camping trip we were getting to try them out. They were water proof though and I just had to hope that the advertising was correct and that they would be fine. 

As we sat in the car and assessed the conditions of everything, a man in a pickup truck was driving around telling everyone that the road was about to be flooded and that if you were planning on leaving the campground because of the storm that you needed to do so right away. So we decided to leave. We had most of our stuff and we weren’t all that far from home.

The issue at hand though was now how were we going to get all this gear dried out and safe? I didn’t have a garage anymore. The gear lived in a storage unit and I couldn’t put wet gear away in a closed storage unit. The next time I’d open it up it would smell so bad. Luckily, my storage facility had a giant indoor loading dock area. So we decided to drive all this wet gear there and put away anything that was dry enough and take the super wet stuff back to my house. 

It wasn’t all that bad once we got through everything at the storage unit. There were a few things that obviously had to come back to my house for further drying. Namely, the chairs and anything else with fabric. But anything that was mostly metal or plastic, had dried out in the car or was toweled down in the loading dock. 

We got the rest of the stuff back to my house and set it up in my shower or on my balcony to dry. My friend Myk met us there and rode back with us to the campsite once it looked like the rain was dying down. It was a silent ride out there while we wondered what kind of disaster we were gonna pull up to. Much to our surprise though, it wasn’t all that bad. The canopy and tent were still standing, the kayaks were still exactly where we left them, and the rain had slowed to a steady drizzle. 

The three of us got to work fast. We folded the cots up and put them in the car. We Separated the cover from the frame on the pop up canopy and put those in the car, and we wrapped up the rope lights. The tent was disassembled and put in the trunk and the kayaks were mounted to the roof. We were all wet again, but everything was cleaned up nicely. We stopped at the dumpster on our way out to lay the tent to rest and say our final goodbye. We then headed home to finish unpacking and cleaning gear. 

The following month we would do a gear day at Jenna’s house to completely re-do our packing process and start leaning much heavier on the individual pack than ever before. Huguenot completely changed the way we camp and we will continue to feel the anxiety of bringing all the gear with us. It will be seven months before we do a “glamping” trip like that again. We stuck to “dry camping” for the rest of the fall of 2021. This way we only had to bring our hiking packs and the small amount of gear needed for the dry sites (no electricity or potable water).  

Needless to say, this trip was, hands down, our worst (Jenna argues second worst), but the lessons we would take away from it would prove to be priceless. It just goes to show that Nature doesn’t care about you and you are never as prepared as you think you are. 

Stay Dirty,

Stone.  

[sticks-and-stone]

Manatee Springs

June 4, 2021 to June 6, 2021

For this trip we stayed on the state park vibes and decided to add the springs element. On weekends that we’re not out camping during the summer, we’re out on the water in our kayaks. We have fallen in love with the springs for paddling, but we almost never visit the springs for swimming. So we decided Manatee Springs would be good for swimming since it was a bit smaller and not really good for paddling. So we left the kayaks at home and decided this would be a spring swimming trip.

We got to the campsite about 30 minutes before sundown. The sites on either side of us and across the path from us were already set up. We got out of the car and immediately sprayed ourselves with bug spray. We have made the bug mistakes before and we were not going to make anymore. We scoped out the site and briefly disagreed on where to place the tent. Once we had the layout figured out, we split tasks and Jenna got to work on the tent and I on the pop up and tarp canopy. 

I somehow managed to get the tarp canopy up with just the pop up canopy, the tent, one on-site tree, and one very far away tree. Luckily, I had recently restocked my paracord stash, so I had a significant length available to me. I didn’t cut into it at all, I just rewrapped it on Saturday night after I took it down. 

We didn’t have much time to hang out by the fire on Friday night. We got done setting up just in time to start hearing the 4 teenage boys next door start to play beer pong. These sites were very close together, but luckily we were able to make a sort of privacy barrier with our structures. I actually started to enjoy listening to them banter back and forth. Male youths are odd. 

We noticed a nearby deer just meandering around behind some of the campsites between the campground and the parking lot for the swimming area. This deer casually wandered right up to the back of our site and looked curious and fearless. It was probably about 100-120 pounds. It came right up to us like it wasn’t afraid of us at all. We shooed it away despite how intriguing its presence was. When animals in nature fail to fear humans, humans will cause them harm either intentionally or unintentionally. So we left it alone and scared it off to go be an animal some place else. 

For the rest of the night we played gin rummy and for once I actually won! We were getting hot even at night time outside and then realized that we could be using the oscillating fan outside next to us to keep us cool and to keep smoke from the fire out of our faces. We also realized that the folding step ladder that we use to hang paracord high up in trees could be used as a two leveled table between our chairs while we sat by the fire. Honestly, this was likely the biggest game changer for us this weekend. Why hadn’t we thought of this yet? It kept the bugs away, the smoke from the fire out of our face, and it kept us cool. During the hot months, this is a must-have set up. Then at the end of the night, we just bring the fan back inside the tent with us. 

We didn’t stay up all that late on Friday night, so we were up rather early on Saturday. We made breakfast and coffee and waited for the rest of the campground to awaken. The boys next to us slept in pretty late and we discovered that one of them slept in an open-air hammock hung up in the border trees that separate the campsites. So he was directly behind our pop up tent...snoring away. It was annoying to say the least. My least favorite aspect of Full Amenities Camping like this is that you are usually elbow to elbow with your neighbors. 

After we got moving, fed, and caffeinated, we decided to change into our bathing suits and head down to the water. It wasn’t a very far walk from our campsite to the swimming area and because it was so early there wasn’t anyone at the park yet, so we had the area to ourselves to explore.

It was still a bit too cold to swim since the sun hadn’t had a chance to warm everything up just yet, so we went back to camp for a little bit before heading back to the swimming hole once we started to hear vehicles filling the parking lot. In order to get our blood flowing hot enough to enjoy swimming in such cold water, we hiked down the boardwalk and back.

The swimming hole was cold. As to be expected. We first went to one of the staircases leading into the water down near the spring head because there was only an older couple there and not too many people and kids like up river further away. These stairs that we chose though weren’t concrete like the other ones, they were grated and of course we forgot our shoes. The older man that was over there was bullying us about hesitating to get into the water. My hesitation is rarely the temperature of the water like people assume, and usually more about the depth. I can never tell if I'm going to hit a big rock while diving in or not. So I usually wait until someone else jumps in first or I try to ease myself in via the stairs. Easing myself in is much harder because entering the water gradually makes it harder to get accustomed to the temperature. 

I finally got in and it was glorious. There is something magical about that rush of cold water over your entire body all at once. You get used to it rather quickly, and once you do it's nearly impossible to want to get out. Jenna came in soon after, but wanted to hang on the stairs. Since these stairs are grated, it was pretty painful. We forgot to pack our water shoes. So we decided to go over to the area with the concrete stairs.  

Swimming in a spring isn’t really like swimming in a pool. If you lay on a float and just relax, you’re going to float out to the big river and get caught in all kinds of nature. It’s usually too deep to wade (there are a few springs with swimming holes where wading is doable and really awesome. This was not one of those) so we usually play. That’s right...play. It’s so much fun to play in the spring. Each spring is different from the last and changes from time to time so It’s exciting every time. Today, we brought the underwater camera and decided to get new action shots. Here’s how some of mine turned out: 

We played like this for an hour or so before the park started getting more and more crowded. So we got out of the water to make room for the actual children and just sat off to the side and watched all the people try to get brave enough to get into the icy cold water. We sat there for a good bit of time and just air dried and people-watched.  

Exhausted from a half of a day full of swimming, playing, and laughing, we decided to head back to camp for lunch. Afterward, I hung one of our hammocks to lay in and read while we wait out the hottest part of the day in the shade of our campsite. My reading didn’t last long and I ended up napping hardcore for a while. 

Much like our trip to Stephen Foster, we did most of our activities early in the day on Saturday, leaving the afternoon and evening to just be at camp. I tried to make note of what gear I was utilizing and what gear I wasn’t so that I could begin removing items from my pack and from the bin as I needed. We didn’t start an “Electronics Bin” this trip, but since we had full amenities, we still packed all the things along with us. We got some great use out of the tarps and the pop up canopy, but it was becoming clear that our paracord stash was beginning to run low. 

I also made note of gear that I wanted to have with us that we didn’t have yet. We needed to replace our extension cords, I wanted to add rope lights, and we also desperately needed an outdoor surge protector. Our tent was also showing signs of wearing down, so we wanted to start looking into replacements for it. Maybe even sizing up. I also wanted to add more storage options to the inside of our pop up canopy. 

These trips had begun to feel like tiny little learning courses. Each time we went out and camped, we learned new skills, found uses for better gear, or experienced something for the first time. We had begun a pattern of spending half our time doing something off site (like hiking, swimming, or kayaking) and the other half of our time building skills at camp or perfecting our gear kits. Each time getting better and better.

As we progress, we are also inching closer and closer to being prepared for thru hiking. At this point, our gear is ALMOST where it needs to be. We still didn’t have any cooking, fire, or hydration gear in each of our packs, but we get closer each time and by the end of this calendar year, we will be where we need to be! 

Stay Dirty,

Stone. 

[sticks-and-stone]

Stephen Foster

May 21, 2021 - May 23, 2021

This was the one where we hiked a few miles with weighted packs - no water sports - musical neighbors - hard ground (used logs instead of stakes)

It starts to get pretty warm in Florida in late April early May, so we didn’t want to take any chances. We booked a state park campsite so that we could have electricity and fans. We chose Stephen Foster because it was fairly close to home, pretty popular, and one we hadn’t done yet. Stephen Foster State Park is home to the Annual Florida Folk Festival. I used to go with my parents when I was growing up, so I was excited to see the park without all the festivities going on. As it turned out, we chose the weekend just before the festival! So there were plenty of musicians already at the campground. 

Jenna and I arrived at the park Friday evening, stopped at the ranger station to buy firewood, and then quickly found our campsite. We were in the back corner of the loop, furthest away from the bathrooms, but also fairly set aside from the other sites which I appreciated. For once, we actually arrived before dark, but we still had to hustle to get everything set up before we lost the sun. 

For this trip, we drove my Hyundai and packed everything in the good ole Gear Bin. For the last several trips we did away with that bin. It’s heavy, hard to take in and out of the car, and difficult to keep things organized. But we figured it makes packing the small car more streamlined if we have most of our stuff in one bin. With a car as small as mine, keeping packing simple is key. 

We also both packed our own individual packs for the first time. We decided during our prep between trips that we wanted to start moving toward self-sufficiency and perfecting our individual hiking backpacks. While at the same time, we wanted to start adding to our car-camping kit as well. Our list for that included a bigger tent, a better pop up potty, fans, outdoor lighting, and a better cooler. But our packs would be our own and we would start with the Essential Ten and work our way to efficient, ultralight packs for backcountry, kayaking, and hiking trips. I was able to get all of my personal items into my hand-me-down backpack. That included items like cooking tools, hygiene products, clothing, shoes, and personal protective gear. What it didn’t include was food and water. It will take me several trips to get my pack just right and I fully expect my pack to change with every trip. 

This site was slightly different from what we had been used to. Firstly, the fire pit was sunk into the ground, so the top of the ring was flush with the ground. At first, I thought this was a great idea! Rings get gross and tend to be a bit of an eyesore. But it really just limited the bottom and side airflow for the fire. Starting and maintaining would prove to be difficult. 

Secondly, the ground was HARD. This site was clearly designed for a small camper. Getting stakes into the ground was nearly impossible. So what we did instead was tie the guy-lines to logs and used the weight of those to secure the corner of the tent, canopy, and pop up potty.  

Jenna and I got set up before dark and spent a good amount of time sitting around the fire before bed. This was a dry trip. We brought no alcohol with us. So to pass the time, we started playing Gin Rummy over the cooler. Jenna kicked my ass more than once, but it was a really great way to play and pass the time. 

We woke up early the next day without hangovers (for once) and ate a quick breakfast. One of our goals for this trip was to go rucking through the park for as long as possible. So we emptied our packs and weighed them down with jugs of water (we switched away from the water cooler to individual gallon jugs - easier to pack) and other various items then drove the car to the front of the park and found the trailhead. The marked trail was only about half a mile long. So we decided to cut through the park and extend the hike to about two and a half miles.  

The trail was great. It followed along the Suwannee river and was fully shaded. Plenty of small hills to create a variety of elevations. Plus it was well-marked which is always a plus. We made it through our hike in a couple of hours and then headed back to camp. Nothing really exciting happened during the hike, I was mostly impressed with myself for being able to walk a couple miles with about fifteen pounds on my back. 

We got back to camp and made spaghetti for lunch. Simple, yet we had never thought of it. We don’t like to do a huge meal in the middle of the day, but it's nice to have something substantial after a hike, so we devoured  more than our fair share of noodles and red sauce and then spent the rest of the trip hanging out at camp. 

Jenna and I took this time to get some planning done for how we wanted to move forward with our camping techniques. We definitely wanted to keep working on streamlining our backpacks, make car camping more comfortable, and find some new spots to camp, hike, and explore. So we spent some time flipping through some brochures given to us by my parents from all over the state of Georgia. We didn’t find much, but we did start remembering all the places we had been wanting to try including Black Rock, Stone Mountain, and Providence Park.  

We also talked about our gear and how we wanted to make it better. Our hiking packs would be our individual responsibility, but we still needed to collaborate about how to move forward with car camping. I had a small car (this will change soon, but I had no idea at the time), and Jenna’s car, though bigger, was not always in functional order. So we wanted to start adding more gear to increase our comfort levels, but we would have to be aware of packing space. So we began brainstorming how to do that. 

We have two categories of camping styles that are implementing or intending to implement: Car Camping and Backpacking. Backpacking is the simple one gear-wise. We just need to individually improve our packs to contain everything that we each need to survive in the wild. These trips would be backcountry or hike-in only camps. No car. 

Car Camping gets a bit more complicated as we have a couple different types of car camping: Dry Camping and Full Amenities Camping. 

Dry Camping basically means that we do not have electricity or potable water. So the first thing we wanted to do was separate out the gear that needs electricity to function. This meant the extension cords, the heater, and some other stuff. I decided to put all of these into a completely separate bin. This way, when we do our dry spots (mostly the southwest Florida water management district sites) we will just leave that bin behind since we won't be able to use any of the gear anyway. These sites also rarely have bathrooms or showers. 

Full Amenities Camping refers to campgrounds that are fully developed. This means that they have potable water, electricity, full bathrooms, hot showers, and usually cell service. On these “glamping” trips, we will do the whole set up, run power cords, fans, and lights. As well as pack extra clothing so we can take full advantage of the bathhouses. 

Splitting our camping into categories like this based on where we’re going felt right. We decided to take it further and separate even more gear out of the big bin, but we ended up waiting a trip or two to implement it. 

After hours of planning and scheming, we decided to eat dinner. Jenna grilled hamburgers on the site’s standing grill. Instead of cooking directly on it, we wrapped it in aluminum foil. We love to get down and dirty, but these grills can get GROSS. So we didn’t want to take any chances. As always, the burgers Jenna made were absolutely delicious. And we ended the evening full and happy. 

The next day, we were exhausted. Not hungover, but very much exhausted. We used our trusted kettle and stove combo to make some coffee to get us up and going and got to packing up. We packed in record time and made it back to civilization rather quickly and easily. 

All in all this trip was about growth, planning, and dreaming. We learned a lot about what we want and what we want to work up to. Our next few trips will focus on the same as we get better and better with each trip and closer and closer to complete self-sustaining packs. Stay tuned for more stories. Trust me, they get good! 

Stay Dirty, 

Stone 

[sticks-and-stone]

Potts Preserve

April 2, 2021 - April 4, 2021

Despite the protesting of my mom, coworkers, and friends, I decided to take on this trip by myself since Jenna had to work and I didn’t really have anyone else to come with me. This marked my first real solo camping trip. I did Goldhead by myself for half a trip in March 2020 and I did a quick solo overnight at Buck Lake in September 2020, but this was the first completely solo two-nighter. The entire weekend, just me. 

I proved this time that it is 0% Jenna’s fault that we keep getting to campsites after dark on Fridays. I went on this trip all by myself and still somehow managed to arrive well after 9pm. I stopped in Starke for firewood, and stopped again for gas, and a third time to take a phone call from my father. So it was already completely dark by the time I made it to Potts Preserve. 

Jenna and I camped this location back in September of 2019 on our very first camping trip together (disregarding our multiple camping trips in high school - we have limited memory of those) so I felt pretty comfortable here. The campground is set up pretty simply. It's just a line of sites. We camped passed all of them in an area that wasn’t even designated as a camp site back in 2019. This time, I found one right in the middle that was encircled by pine trees. 

I set up the tent, the pop-up potty, and the folding table all within an hour. I started a fire in the ring and started drinking. I put six beers into the small kayak cooler that I packed to bring out on the water with me. This way I didn’t have to keep opening the big cooler every time I needed a new beer which meant I could use the big cooler as an uninterrupted foot stool. I stayed up as late as I could stand it because I didn’t want to be restless in the tent on night one. It worked, because once I retired to the tent, I fell right asleep. Despite the loudest camp neighbors and being completely alone on site, I slept very well. 

I woke up the next day and got right back to work on setting up the rest of the site. I hung a hammock, piled the firewood neatly between two trees, and laid out all of the things on the folding table. I ended up separating everything that would normally stay on the table into a box. Leaving them loose on the table top leads to toppling disasters when I'm reaching around for things. The box consisted of bug sprays, sunscreens, wipes, and cooking gear. It could be easily pulled into the tent in the event of sudden rain or moved from one end of the table to the other depending on what I needed to do. 

I made myself some coffee and breakfast and got dressed for my day. My agenda was pretty bare, but I was certain that I could find a close paddling spot, so I pulled out a map and found a boat ramp literally 6 miles further into the preserve than where the campground was located. So I put some snacks and beers in the kayak cooler and made my way down to the ramp. 

It was a simple single wide ramp and parking lot. There was a newly constructed dock with wheelchair access next to the ramp with an old man fishing quietly and chain smoking cigarettes. He watched as I loaded my kayak into the water and mounted it. I asked him if he was having any luck this morning and he shrugged and said probably not because he wasn’t using any bait. He waved a beer can up at me and laughed. I hope to be like this old man one day. 

It was a beautiful day for paddling and I could not have been happier about it. I paddled about one mile upstream until my arms started to feel like Jell-O and then cracked open a beer and munched on my snacks. A commotion up river grabbed my attention so I paddled toward. Sounded like people, but I heard no sign of a boat. As it turns out there was a huge riverside group campground just around the bend. I paddled closer and noticed that many of the campers had their kayaks parked up on the bank. I couldn’t tell where this was from any road and I didn't want to talk to a stranger while I was out there alone, so I just took a mental note to bring Jenna this way once we came back to Potts (which we did in September of 2021). 

I finished my snack and beer and began to feel slightly paranoid about being out on the water alone. Boat traffic was beginning to pick up and I was feeling tipsy. So I paddled back slowly, letting the current do most of the work and did my best to calm my nerves and enjoy the view. I got back to the dock, the same old man sitting up there with a new cigarette. He asked me what brought me back so soon. I told him that I couldn’t handle the upstream paddle like I thought I could. I sat with him for a bit and gave him a beer from my cooler. Never got his name or a photo, but his carefree demeanor was inspirational. 

I loaded my kayak back onto my car and headed back to camp. By the time I got back, I was exhausted. It’s amazing how a two mile paddle will wear you out when you’re out in the sun all morning. So I decided to take a little snooze in my hammock; maybe get some reading done. As always, I intended to stay in the hammock longer than I actually did. So I wasn’t there long, but it’s still worth pulling the hammock out and hanging it up. 

 After my quick snooze I wandered around camp for a bit just looking for things to do, collecting sticks, and spying on my neighbors (collecting ideas for set ups) for a bit. While walking the circumference of my own site, I notice a tiny little tenant's family on the ground between two trees. I was never able to identify the species and I never saw the mom come back to it, but I had a little bird’s nest as my closest neighbor! 

I continued my trek around the campsite just studying my set up and thinking of ways to improve it. Meanwhile, I burned cardboard that I had been collecting from home (my complex didn’t recycle or accept cardboard in the dumpster). And just admired how absolutely perfect this spot was. I wished Jenna had joined me so that she could see it. I knew I had just gotten lucky this time and would probably have a really hard time finding this spot available again. 

Also while on my walkabout I found a singular tree that had been struck by lightning. Nothing overly significant about it, but I do find anomalies like this to be eerie and a little spooky. The cool part was that the tree still had green leaves on the top. Despite being a victim of Zeus’ fury, it was thriving. 

I just kept a fire going and maintained my campsite for the majority of the afternoon. I baked in the sun a bit; letting my pale skin crisp a little bit in the late summer heat. I thought about how this was the two year anniversary of monthly camping and here I was at the campground that started it all. It felt nice to think about how far we had come since that first trip; how streamlined our packing has become and how easily we make these trips successes. And here I was, doing the damn thing all on my own. What a feat. 

As the sun began to fall, I decided to light my site a bit. I lined a pathway from my tent to the pop up potty behind the tent with the garden lights I bought on Amazon before the February trip this year. They are bulky to pack, complicated to set up, and not all that bright, but they are still useful for lighting the way to the potty in the middle of the night. (in 2021 I gave these lights away to a friend's mom who used them in her backyard.) 

I overpacked food this trip. Later on in late 2021 I will learn how to pack food efficiently, but for this one, I knew no such skill. I cooked about 3 hamburgers (keeping food frozen or cold all the way home is a waste of energy). So I had the lion’s share of beef that night, but plenty to hold over until the next morning to have with eggs. Cooking without Jenna is challenging. She is so much better at it than I am and she definitely enjoys it a great deal more than I do.  But I made do. I didn’t starve, that’s for sure. 

I bought one new piece of gear for this trip; just one. It came in a pack of two and only cost eight dollars for the pair. I am drafting this about 7 months after this trip and I can say that without a doubt this is the best piece of gear I’ve ever purchased. I know I have said that about pieces before but this time, I actually mean it. I bought two telescoping bellows. They collapse down to about the size of lighters and extend about a meter long. You blow through them to push air into a fire. Compared to fanning with cardboard or blowing with your face all but IN the flames, this is a massive game changer. It allows me to aerate a flame without even moving my seat. I keep it in my pocket at all times and whip it out often. 10/10 would buy again. 

So all in all this trip was pretty okay! I didn’t do anything overly exciting. I didn’t really learn any new skills, but I also didn’t have a completely terrible time! I relied on myself, I stayed hydrated, fed, and entertained the entire time. For forty-eight hours alone in the wilderness, it was not bad at all! I look forward to further streamlining my pack, lowering the overall weight of my gear, and continuing my slow transition into backcountry camping, thru-hiking, and kayak camping. Here’s to another great trip in the books and to Jenna’s return to camp with me! 

Stay Dirty, 

Stone.

[sticks-and-stone]

Alston Tract

March 5, 2021 - March 7, 2021

We did the Alston Tract (part of the Southwest Florida Water Management District) for our March 2021 trip. Site was free of charge, but still had a port-a-potty and a well pump. We had neighbors like we did at Potts and Hampton in 2019, but we don’t mind that all too much anymore. We made some major changes to gear packing, planning, and execution this time around as we are starting to split our camping styles into two different categories: car camping and backcountry camping. This trip also brought on its own unique challenges like rain and raccoons. But as always, we made the best of a somewhat challenging situation. 

We planned to arrive well before nightfall on Friday. Jenna was off of work and I took a half day. But as we always seem to do, we didn’t quite make it. We got to the site just before sunset and started working quickly to get everything set up. We did manage to get the tent up and the fire started before we lost light, but since we were expecting rain the next day, we had to hang a canopy and that was done after the sun went down. Regardless, we created a pretty neat little homestead for ourselves. I have done the tarp canopy several times now and with little effort, I can erect a pretty solid one. It keeps the rain out, the sun shaded, and it provides an added layer of privacy from our neighbors. I learned the hard way  over time that it needs to be hung at an angle to allow water to flow off of it instead of collecting on top. I also found this angle helpful as I attempted to sweep off the collected leaves after the rain had subsided. The next day we put up the pop-up potty for the first time in many trips. The port-a-potty at the campground was nasty. We decided that we’d actually prefer to pee in a hole in the ground. 

After we got all set up, we ran into town (Zephyrhills) to get firewood. Usually, we can collect it on site or purchase it from the park, but neither of these were options this time around, so we drove around this tiny hilly town until we found a store (Lowes) that sold some. We bought as many bundles as would fit in the car and drove back to camp where we made a very late dinner of chicken fajitas. 

I really need to do a better job of documenting our meals when we go car camping. Jenna’s special skill is feeding me better in the woods than I feed myself when I’m home. The addition of the tiny camp stove has made a big impact on our ability to cook well while we’re out in the woods too. This weekend, for example, was too rainy to really keep anything on the fire, so we were able to have a heat-controlled burner under the canopy so Jenna could cook. We also have the option to use smaller cooking gear with the stove versus having to have big, long handled gear for cooking over the fire. 

For this meal, Jenna made us chicken fajitas. She bought pre-cooked, frozen grilled chicken cut in chunks so that we didn’t have to worry about cooking the chicken all the way through. She cooked the veggies down in the pot first and we put those aside and covered them in aluminum foil. Meanwhile, we wrapped the tortillas in foil and placed them against the inside of the ring of our big fire so that they would get warm, but not burn. It really didn’t take all that long to put this meal together, but because of how late of a start we got, we didn’t finish eating until well after 9pm. Which is fine, there’s no clock when you’re camping. 

We’re trying to be better about cleaning up after every meal, washing the gear that was used, and putting everything away. Keeping the campsite organized not only helps to pass the time, but it makes packing up at the end of the weekend so much easier. It’s also just good practice to take as good of care as your gear as possible. 

Jenna and I stayed up until a little bit too late the first night. This is another pattern of ours and it’s not a bad one. Going to bed that late will ensure that we actually fall asleep. But it also gives us our first chance to slow down and relax on site. Sometimes, thes trips are the only times that Jenna and I get to hang out, so we have plenty to chat about. On this particular night, we broke out the guitar and played a couple songs, likely disturbing our neighbors. At least we’re talented. 

The first night wasn’t really all that cold. It dropped into the fifties, but I was fine sleeping in my sweatpants and fleece jacket. I brought along the beanie, wool socks, and gloves just in case, but on this first night my body temperature was pretty high from the alcohol and I was just tired enough to not be all that bothered by the cold. I did have to get up once to pee, but instead of using the port-a-potty, I just squatted a small distance away from the tent. 

I woke up the next day cold. Once the alcohol worked its way through me, my body temperature returned to normal and the brisk air brushed my skin upon exiting the tent. It was cold. Jenna was right behind me, so she got to work on the fire while I got to work on the tiny camp stove. The best thing about this stove is how quickly it can be lit and how much heat it emanates. So it does a nice job of holding me over while Jenna struggles with the fire. 

Because the stove lights so quickly, we get coffee going without wasting any time at all. Once again we got to use our cute new little kettle. It boils slightly less water than our old one, but it boils exponentially faster. This is our second trip with it and I still love it. I am considering, however, replacing it with a collapsible kettle. This way, it can be used for both car camping and backcountry camping. It’s not an urgent upgrade, but something that I will be keeping in the back of my mind. 

We’ve changed or upgraded most of our gear and habits over the last year and a half, but one thing that hasn’t seemed to change is the nasty instant coffee that we keep with us when we’re camping. Jenna has gotten to a point where she won’t drink it at all, but I would rather have terrible tasting caffeine than none at all. The next upgrade I will be making will be a better way to have coffee. I don’t want to have to carry any more gear, but I may invest in better instant coffee. I have looked into ways to make a “pour over” type of coffee, but if it requires carrying too much more gear, I will stick to the instant. Stay tuned for future trip reviews as I experiment with different options. 

We got started on our hot breakfast as soon as coffee was done. Jenna had a recipe for biscuits and gravy and we expected that it would take quite some time to finish it so we wanted to get as much of a head start as we could. Luckily, with rain being forecast for most of Saturday, we had no plans to leave the site, so we had nothing but time. 

The first thing we did was cook the biscuits. Ideally, we’d cook them in an Dutch oven, but since we didn’t have one, we cooked them in the pot with the lid on it. This resulted in burnt biscuit bottoms, but doughy centers. Honestly, mixed with the sausage gravy, it was very good. I took the time while the biscuits were cooking to do what is becoming my favorite campsite pass-time: creating a tiny kitchen. I break up and stack tiny pieces of wood so that we have it to add to the stove and I organize the stacks by size and density of “logs” (sticks). It’s a silly hobby, but it makes me smile and helps to make time go by faster during the inevitably long process of campsite cooking. 

After the biscuits were done cooking, we wrapped them in aluminum foil, placed inside the big fire ring to keep warm, and got to work on the sausage gravy. Jenna did most of it. I just spent most of the time sitting on the ground next to the stove, organizing the tiny kitchen or traversing the campsite to secure the guy lines for the tarps or collecting more sticks for the stove. It was also during the wait for gravy to cook that we decided to set up the pop-up potty so we could have a private bathroom without having to use the port-a-potty. In the daylight, that bathroom was NASTY. Much nicer to just pee in a hole in the ground. 

Once the biscuits were done, we placed them in foil around the fire ring to keep warm and then Jenna started working on the sausage gravy. I didn’t see the prep for this because I like to stay out of Jenna’s way while she’s cooking, but I think it was milk, flour, and sausage. She mixed them all together and then placed the pot on the little stove until it started to boil. Once it was the consistency it needed to be, we broke up the biscuits and mixed everything together. For a camp meal, it was very delicious. We burnt the bottom of the biscuits, but that was mostly due to not having the right gear to cook them, but mixed with the sausage gravy, you couldn’t even tell. 

We tried to be better about cleaning up kitchen gear after each use to avoid a build up of gunk and to keep the site organized. So right after breakfast I got to work on cleaning. I like doing it this way, because I feel less bad about Jenna doing all the cooking and I get to put my hands on the gear and know exactly where each piece is at all times. 

After breakfast was completely cleaned up, we drove back into town to stock up on firewood. It didn’t take us very long, but I really do not like leaving the site for anything if I can avoid it, but firewood is always a hit or miss aspect of these trips. Packing firewood risks poisoning the local forestry, but waiting until arrival to figure it out risks not having any at all. I have found through my experiences that these SWFWMD sites tend to be picked clean of any viable firewood (unless we start chopping trees down), so it may be best to start packing some in with us. 

After we got back we admired our little homestead a bit before the rain started. It wasn’t much, but enough to not want to be out in it. So we spent the next few hours under our shelter while the rain started and stopped over and over again. It did get to the point where I was able to try out some new gear. The ponchos that I had purchased right before this trip were a pair of one size fits all, coat-style, and vinyl. I put one on to make a run to the car for paper towels and it barely fit. I was disappointed, but not surprised. Thankfully, due to the lightness of the rain, it worked just fine. The short walk to the car soaked it on the outside and I needed to find a way to dry it out. Luckily, it didn’t weigh much and I was able to hang it from one of the guy lines coming off of the canopy tarp. It hung at eye level, so as we continued to day drink and become less and less sober, it would startle me whenever I turned around and saw it.

We spent the rest of the afternoon just relaxing on site. There is plenty to do at a campsite without having to leave. We love going swimming, kayaking, hiking, and whatnot, but sometimes the weather just doesn’t permit that and we just have to stay on site and entertain ourselves. I actually really enjoy these types of trips because they are far more relaxing and I get to spend time thinking about and planning future trips. It’s also a good way to remember to take some photographs of things we don’t normally think to. Like this one of the views from under the canopy tarp. It was wet, but not stormy, but it was still so nice to have that extra shelter. In fact, in this picture I am sitting on the ground (you can see my shoe) and this tarp canopy did such an effective job, that the ground stayed perfectly dry enough for me to do so. It was tall enough though to comfortably sit in a camp chair too if we decided we wanted to.

 The first thing I did to pass some time was play with the tiny kitchen. I collected more wood pieces and even chopped up some of the logs we purchased so that they would fit into the stove. I like to stack them up around the stove for ease-of-access as well as the aesthetic pleasure that I get from it. We burn through wood in the stove so much faster than we thought we would, but using charcoal helps us to keep from having to refill it with wood constantly. We use a combination of both, but we could just use the coals and be just fine. 

Once I had my fill of playing with the tiny kitchen and getting everything restocked for it, I got up to find some other activity to pass the time. I had a hammock pulled out for incase the weather got any better, but it didn’t look as though it was going to, so I just laid the hammock out on the ground under the canopy and made myself a little nest on which I would read, write, and take notes for about an hour. I didn’t think to take any pictures of that set up at the time. During my own quiet time, Jenna was asleep in the tent for an afternoon nap. Typically, napping while camping would seem like a waste of time, but this trip was rainy with an empty itinerary, so it was a perfect time to catch some Zs through the sound of rainfall on the tent and tarps. 

I may not have thought about getting a picture of my afternoon resting nest under the canopy, but I did manage to get a picture of a hairy little caterpillar that made a playground out of the top of our water cooler. After I took the picture, I began to worry that he may be poisonous, so I transported him to the cover of a nearby leaf instead. 

After her nap, Jenna joined me back outside of the tent. By this point, the rain had pretty much stopped and it hadn’t rained enough to drench our fire pit, so we got to work on rebuilding that. While we did, one of our campsite neighbors was off-leash training his beagle and he ended up wandering over to our site. His name was Loki (I did not get the human’s name). And he was so cute. Apparently, he’s very bad at being off leash and had been trying to come say hi to us all day. We of course were very happy to say hello and very appreciative of his human keeping his safe distance from our campsite. There’s nothing worse than someone just inviting themselves up to your camp. I tried to get a picture of Loki, but he moved so fast and I did not want to appear creepy to his human, so the best I could do was a shot of the back of his human, with Loki nearly covered by a bush in the foreground. In the background of this picture, you can see a pop-camper. This belonged to a road-tripping older guy who likes to talk to strangers too much. We watched as he spoke to Loki’s human in depth about all his travels. He was retired and traveling the country (or the state - I’m not sure) and this was his fourth stop or something like that. Free sites in the water management districts are really popular among thru-campers. They’re free, almost always available, and easily accessible by vehicle. I have  no issue with thru-campers, but all they want to do is brag about how long they’ve been traveling. SOME OF US only get the weekend, please do not ruin our small isolation with your bragging. 

We lost sunlight surprisingly quickly. But once we did, we decided that we were hungry for dinner. We kept things simple and made hamburgers. We still used the camp stove in fear that the rain would start up again and ruin the cooking process, but at the same time we kept the main fire going for warmth. Hamburgers are a classic for us. They’re quick, easy to pack, and if we have leftovers, they’re great with eggs for the next morning. Jenna did most of the work, as always, and I did the clean up right after. We spent the rest of the evening just sitting by the fire and drinking. We broke out the guitar at some point and serenaded our neighbors (against their will) before calling it a night around ten and turning in for the night. As soon as the sun went down, so did the temperature outside. This second night was going to be much cooler than the night before. But as always, we were ready. 

Despite having a strict timeline for getting home on Sunday, we did no pre-packing this time around. Though convenient for the next day, it really is a pain to do it. I didn’t feel comfortable taking the tarps down before we were ready to leave and I also wanted to make sure that they were dried out completely before I folded them. Letting them stay up for the second night allowed that to happen. We have gotten so good at organizing the campsite and keeping it tidy, that we figured packing on Sunday would be fine and we wouldn’t need to prep the night before. 

When we got up on Sunday we got to work right away by emptying the tent first and foremost. This means that everything except for the cots has to come out. I placed everything on the folding table under the tarp and with Jenna’s help, moved the table away from the canopy so that the inside items could be organized while more of the structure was coming down. This strategy is perfect for when there are two people. Another change we made was piling things next to the car until everything was ready to go in instead of packing the car as we went. This way, if we needed to get to something after we had packed it, we could. And we could be 100% strategic about packing the car by being able to see everything all laid out next to it. Despite not pre-packing, this was our best, fastest, and most efficient pack out to date.  

My next trip is in April and I will be going back to Potts Preserve which is also in the SWFWMD and the very first site that Jenna and I visited when we began camping back in 2019. This will also be my second solo trip, but first full-weekend solo trip. My objectives for that trip will be self-reliance, gear inventory, and continuing to work on packing in/out as efficiently as possible. Remember, the ultimate objective for this year is backpacking trips, so packing in/out is key. My main focus for April will be getting going on Saturday morning much faster than we have been. That means cold food and coffee for breakfast only, plenty of snacks for off-site sustainability, and staying hyper-organized. I may bring the kayak to encourage me to get out and on the water as soon as possible. 

Stay Dirty, 

Stone 

[sticks-and-stone]

Kens Camp (Hipcamp)

February 19, 2021 - February 21, 2020

Jenna and I had to book this trip last minute since the riverfront site we booked on Hipcamp had to cancel on us due to flooding. Ken’s Camp wasn’t even supposed to be open yet, but the host decided to let us come anyway since we were just in a tent. In proper Hipcamp fashion, it was basically just this man’s backyard that backed up the Suwannee River. He didn’t live there, but he was staying on the property the same weekend we were because he needed to prepare everything for the flooding that was forecasted for the following week. So he stayed in his RV and we stayed behind him in the open yard in front of the river that has risen up pretty far apparently. It was strange to be able to see where the host was staying, but it wasn’t enough to deter us. After speaking to him, he seemed fine. Still a little disappointed that we never got a chance to meet his dogs.  

As per usual, we didn’t get to the site until after dark. Every single time we go camping on a Friday after work, we try hard to get to the site before the sun goes down, but every single time we fail to do so and end up having to set up camp in the dark. But we have gotten very good at setting up camp with little light. This time though, we felt like even more of an oiled machine. I packed the gear in such a way that we could unpack everything rather seamlessly. So while I got the tent set up, Jenna got the fire going, once the tent was up and ready to be furnished, Jenna handled that while I kept the fire going. We didn’t plan this, we just did it. So within an hour we had our site ready and got to work eating dinner. Jenna made us lunch meat sandwiches and we toasted them on the fire. 

This trip’s biggest challenge was the damp firewood and ground. It had been raining all week in this area, so the ground, though dry on the surface, was damp beneath the surface and the fire pit itself was drenched. The firewood that we had to burn was also wet and took a lot more attention to keep burning. We burned through the fire starters that we packed pretty quickly just trying to dry out the fire pit. Even the next day once we had the pit dried out, we still had to give the fire even more attention than we usually would need to. 

A huge bonus with Ken’s Camp was the bathroom. He had a tiny airplane style portable toilet inside of a partitioned tent. Typically, he hangs a shower in one half of it, but he wasn’t technically open yet, so it was just the toilet in one half and a changing room in the other. Our tent isn’t tall enough for us to stand up in, so changing clothes on a site that isn’t completely private is very difficult, so this was a major game changer for us. I did have the pop-up potty, but I never put it up because Ken had us covered! 

When we finally went to bed around eleven (we always stay up late the first night) we had to break out the handwarmers, beanies, and wool socks. I rarely need to sleep IN my sleeping bag, but it dropped to about 30 degrees overnight on this trip, so I have no choice. I stuffed my compression bag with clothes to use as a pillow. I will never pack a real pillow again. My next round of gear purchasing will include an inflatable pillow, but clothes stuffed in my compression bag worked just fine. 

The next morning, we woke up around 7am which is typical. I got out of the tent first and was so excited to try out a much anticipated piece of gear: the wood burning camp stove. But first, I needed to get warm. The hand warmers are only really good for about 8 hours and I was not about to waste anymore during the day.  I attempted to start the fire in the fire pit, but my very cold fingers made that nearly impossible. I wanted to be warm and I wanted to be warm fast.

 Jenna joined me outside and took over trying to get a fire going, and I got to work on the little camping stove. I found a tree stump and set the stove up there. I put in several twigs and pieces of sticks and sprinkled some fire starter over that and lit it. It went up pretty fast and I immediately realized that this was the best way to get warm fast. 

I bought this little metal three-chamber thing on Amazon for $20. You fill it with wood and put your kettle/pan/pot on top of the grill and you have all the cooking power of a propane grill without having to use finite resources! 

I let the flames subside a little so that I could put the grill on top.The way that the stove is shaped, it allows for a little inferno to form inside and direct the heat directly to the top and to the grill. This was just moments in and I was so impressed with this stove already. 

I also bought a new kettle in my last gear purchase since our old one was a hand-me-down from my father so it was probably older than I am. This kettle is a little smaller, but fits inside of a pot/pan combo kit also purchased from Amazon for about $20. I filled the kettle with water and set it on top. It took a mere couple minutes for the water to come to a boil for the perfect, warm cup of coffee. 

By the time the coffee was ready, Jenna had a decent fire going and we were ready to start breakfast. We decided to cook over the stove since the coffee worked out so well and we were having so many issues keeping the wood lit in the fire pit anyway. 

I made a tiny kitchen around the tree stump on which I put the stove. I’m not sure why, but this was very satisfying for me. I gathered small sticks for the fuel in the stove, cleared places for the cooking utensils and placed a couple towels on the ground so Jenna and I had places to sit while we cooked over here. 

Jenna cooked eggs over the new stove and made these delicious breakfast wraps for us. We continued to boil water so that we could have warmed lemon water instead of second coffees (have to be careful of our stomachs while we’re out in the woods) which also helped with getting our body temperatures up enough to actually start our day. 

After breakfast, we started letting the fire burn down a bit and hung a laundry line to dry the towels we used in our “kitchen” and any items of clothing that needed to be warmed in the sun. We made a point to stay organized this time and having a clothes line is a really good place to start that. We also made sure to clean and repack dishes and cookware after each use. This helps to keep the bugs away, but also allows us to get constant practice with packing and unpacking cooking gear. 

Once we cleaned up from breakfast, we decided to get the kayaks out on the Suwannee. We had left the kayaks on the car so we just needed to change clothes and go. Jenna changed first and I checked the kayak straps. Then I changed my own clothes and we headed about a mile down the road to the park with the boat ramp. This park looked awesome. It had camping sites for only $6/night with full electric and waterfront options. Definitely adding that to the list. 

We launched the kayaks and made it less than a quarter of a mile up river when we decided to turn around and come back in. Ken warned us about this, but the water level was so high and the river was moving so fast that it was impossible to paddle upstream. So we packed the kayaks back on the car and stayed at the park for about 30 more minutes with fishing lines thrown out until we got bored enough to go back to camp. 

On the way back to camp, we stopped at the Dollar General and picked up some supplies including a new grill lighter, charcoal for the stove, and lighter fluid (for the wet wood). We love to rough it in nature, but we are not dumb enough to forgo an opportunity to get better gear to make us more comfortable. 

Back at camp we sort of separated around the fire. I got the whittling kit out and Jenna read a book. We didn’t hang the hammocks since there wasn’t a lot of tree coverage on site to do so. I was happy enough at the table and around the fire. We got a little hungry around three or four and Jenna made us hamburgers over the camping stove. They were absolutely amazing. So much so, that we did not get a picture of them like we normally would. By the time we were done eating and cleaning up from that meal, the sun was starting to get less intense and we needed to add more layers. 

Another piece of gear that I purchased before this trip was a set of solar powered garden lights. We always struggle with lighting the campsite. String lights are messy. Battery powered lights require fresh batteries all the time, and we don’t always have electricity to plug lights in. Tiki torches are not allowed at all sites, and tiki juice is pricey and does not stretch very far. So these solar powered lights worked great to light our path to the bathroom. 

My father gave me an old guitar that he pulled out of the garbage and fixed up. So this was its inaugural camping trip. It’s nice to have an already beat up guitar to bring along with us. The one mistake I did make was that I didn’t bring a capo. So I made one. It was ugly and it hurt my hand. But it worked and I’m very proud of it 

The sun went down as it does and we tried out yet another piece of anticipated gear. The cooler light. $8 on Amazon and such a simple thing. It sticks to the bottom of the lid and is activated whenever the lid is opened. Absolutely game changing. A very close second to favorite piece of gear right after the new stove. 

We went to sleep much earlier the second night than we did the first. That seems to be our pattern. This time, I doubled up on my socks, wore my own beanie, and used the second blanket as coverage instead of an additional pillow. I'm glad I did because the second night was so much colder. It was about 40 degrees when we woke up and I found it harder to get out of bed. 

We got to work on coffee and decided to skip breakfast so we didn’t have to clean the dishes again. So we made a small drinking game out of packing up and for the first time ever, we did our “debriefing” on site. I went through each list and made sure each piece of gear was accounted for and its designated spot. I left Jenna in charge of packing the car and she made a bunch of improvements upon my original system. We’re always improving our packing game and I will always brag about it. Despite adding more gear (charcoal and lighter fluid) to the kit, I was still able to get all of the essential gear into the duffle bag. That was my personal gear (clothes, toiletries, etc.), the shelter gear (tent, sleeping bag, tarps), and the tool bag. I hung the new camping stove, the dishes bag, and the new kettle kit on the outside of my duffle and got it all to (barely) fit. Getting it in the car was an entirely different story though 

All in all it was a very successful trip. We got to try out some really cool gear, we found a couple of really great camping sites, we consolidated our packing, and we have begun planning the next phase in our outdoor adventuring! Stay tuned for more updates on that! 

Stay Dirty,

 Stone.

[sticks-and-stone]

Heart Island

September 19, 2020 - September 20, 2020

Well, I did it. I completed my very first, completely solo camping trip. It was a marvelous experience and I will 100% be doing it again. It was a rainy and spooky time, but I learned so much about myself and how I want to evolve as a camper. I didn't bring along much new gear, but I did utilize a lot of new skills and I will be reviewing those here. I didn’t get to experience much of the campsite or surrounding areas, so I won’t be able to review those too much, but I will say that I had a terrible time finding the site in the first place. Although, the fact that it was so difficult to find brought me a little bit of comfort when it came to my safety. I also only gave myself one night, so there really isn’t a whole lot to talk about besides my general reflections and thoughts I had while out there. So here’s how my first solo trip went down: 

I left my house around noon on Saturday and headed down to the site. I found a single campsite through the St. Johns Water Management District. So the site was free and very primitive. As mentioned above, I had a very difficult time getting to it. I drove up and down this back road several times before finally seeing the nearly undetectable gate. I put in my code and drove a couple hundred yards back to the opening. The clearing consisted of two picnic tables, two benches, a fire pit, a well pump, and a handful of pine trees spread throughout the area. The entire campsite was enclosed by a thick wall of forest. It felt open, but secure and I knew that I would be fine here. So I parked my car and started walking around to get a lay of the land.

One of the things I like to do when I get to these more primitive sites is walk around and survey the area. Picking out the right spot to pitch the tent is crucial and I try to take my time on this portion so that I can become familiar with the site while there is still daylight out. I find that it helps to take away the anxiety of nighttime when I already know the full layout of the site. 

I walked around for a bit and took some “before pictures” and all of a sudden it just started pouring. I’m talking about buckets and buckets of rain. While planning for this trip I came up with extra emergency plans including a rain plan, an animal encounter plan, and a “bug out” plan, so I was fine with this rain. 

The first thing I did to begin my setup was back my car up to the spot where I wanted to be. I picked a spot right next to a large tree and about 20 feet from the fire pit. I decided not to use the picnic tables at all since they were completely soaked. The existing structures on site were too spread out for me to keep dry anyway.

Next, I removed my poncho from the bin on the floorboard of the front seat and put that on without leaving my car. Once I had myself rain-proofed, I got out. I found the tarp and paracord in the truck of my car. I left those easily accessible for this exact reason. So, while wearing a very sweaty poncho, I hung the tarp about 8 feet high at the tallest point with about a 25 degree angle in it leaning towards the fire pit. The highest point of it was covering just the trunk of my car so I could get to my gear easily. I had my overhead shelter erected. I could now continue to set up camp while remaining dry. So I removed my poncho. 

The next thing I did was set up a folding chair and a small table in the center of the tarp covered area so that I had a place to rest and set my stuff down while keeping them and myself dry. I removed my fanny pack from the front seat and put it on my waist. This held my phone, keys, wallet, chargers, flashlight, multitool, and knife. I took the single car key off of my key ring, ran a length of paracord through it, and tied it around my neck like a necklace. The idea behind this was that if I needed to get out of the campsite quickly, I could do so without digging through my fanny pack to find my keys. This also meant that even if I didn’t have my fanny pack on (like at night) I would still be able to get in my car if I needed to. I may have overly prepared a little, but this made me so much less anxious. 

Another strategy I implemented was kind of an on-the-spot decision of mine. I was originally going to create an enclosed bathroom complete with a hanging bucket for showering. There was no real need for that kind of privacy on this particular trip, but it would be a handy skill to have when I go back to camping in more populated areas. However, the well pump was not working and the constant rain made it impossible to create the structure that I wanted to. So what I did instead was place the bucket at the lowest point of the tarp I used as shelter from the rain. The rain runoff from the tarp filled the bucket and I used that as a water supply for rinsing myself or any gear that I needed. Not quite a “shower”, but a really creative way to collect non-potable water and keep the rain water from puddling at that corner of the tarp. 

I had my bug out plan in place, my tarp up, my chair and table set up, my beer cracked open, and my game plan for set-up in mind. It was time to finish making a home out of this soggy campsite. I got my tent set up completely under the tarp somehow and just dragged it into place. I put the tent at the edge of the tarp so that it only covered the front door. This gave me more space under the tarp and outside of the tent and the rain guard on the tent would help protect me from the ongoing rain (and it really just kept going the entire time). As usual, I kept a beer handy and maintained a buzz every step of the way. 

With the tent and cot all set up, I got to work on the inside of the tent. Since it was raining, there wasn’t a whole lot to do outside of the tent. So I decided to spend some time in the tent and work on my setup there. I have never really gotten the chance to do this since every other trip I've been on this past year has been dry enough to be outside. 

I started with how I arrange the things in the tent. I usually have two cots (because I'm not usually alone) and they are set up on either side of the tent. This time, I turned my cot sideways, parallel to the door and pushed all the way to the back of the tent. I then laid down a floor mat and a towel so that I could get to the bed without tracking dirt into the tent. I cannot stress how important it is to keep your tent clean. Especially when there’s a good chance that you will be packing up to go home in the rain or in any hurry. 

I originally brought Jenna’s hiking chair to practice packing lightly, but I was worried it might be uncomfortable, so I brought my regular soccer-mom type chair just in case. As it turned out, I hated the hiking chair. So I was very grateful to have the other as an option. Since I was spending so much time in the tent anyway, I set up the chair and the folding table in front of the cot so that I would have a place to sit that isn't a bed. I spent the next couple of hours organizing what I’m now calling a “bedside bin”. (update: after editing this entry, I went back and reorganized my gear. I have taken out the bin, but the idea still remains).

The idea for the bedside bin came to me as I realized that spending a lot of time in the tent would lead to disorganization and clutter which would make me anxious in such a small area. So I have a cubby shelf at home and I packed one of the bins that goes in it. The bin folds down flat and will easily fit in my pack. It then opens up and allows me to store things under my cot in the tent. This solved a problem I didn’t even know existed.  I keep a notebook, bug spray, wipes, a hand towel, and a knife in it. It slides perfectly under my cot so I can reach it from my chair or from the bed.  It can also be carried quickly to the car so I don’t have to leave as much behind if I have to leave quickly. 

I also hung battery powered string lights with the on/off switch placed just behind my chair so that I could shut it on and off as needed without getting up and moving around the small tent. This created nice lighting and allowed me to save my headlamp and flashlight batteries for when I was outside. 

I always keep a deck of cards in my kit. I’ve never used it before this trip. It packs down so small that I could never justify leaving it behind. Thank goodness for that. I turned a game of solitaire in the tent into a solo drinking game and killed a few hours as it got dark outside. Periodically, I would pause and write down a thought, gear review, or idea for future trips. I accidentally created a great space for brainstorming and planning with no distractions or interruptions. 

I took a break from the games around 6pm to eat some food. I packed some pre-made pasta that could either be eaten cold or easily warmed up over a fire. Since it was raining and there was no fire, I ate it cold in my tent. Which was perfectly fine by me as I was fairly tipsy and not really wanting to leave the little cave I made for myself anyway. After dinner, I packed all the food away in the cooler that was being stored in my trunk. I didn’t want to store any food in the tent because there is nothing worse than bugs in the tent or melted ice on the floor. So once I got everything put away, I began readying myself for bed. 

It was important to me on this trip to stay as organized and as clean as possible for a couple different reasons. For one, if I needed to leave suddenly, I wanted to make sure I took as many of my valuables as I could. Having everything in its place made this possible. I also wanted to keep the inside of my tent as clean as I could because it seemed as though the rain wasn’t going to let up until long after my departure the next day. This was also the first time that I was in 100% control of a campsite organization. I can’t describe the anxiety that I experience watching Jenna let her side of the tent get cluttered. Love Jenna, but she is a bit messier than I am. 

Getting ready for bed was a strategic process for me. I wanted to make sure I was sleeping in as clean of clothes as possible to avoid dirtying my sleeping bag. Since the campsite was completely private, I planned to sleep in as few clothes as I could. It was warm, but not nearly as bad as it was for me and Jenna at Buck Lake the month prior. Plus, I had my fan and the portable generator. I brought a fresh garbage bag into the tent and as I removed dirty clothes, I put them in that bag and intended to put ALL laundry in there so that I could simply empty that bag into my washer at home. I waited as long as I could to change out of my clothes so that I could avoid getting sweaty in my sleeping clothes. 

I placed all of the dirty dishes into the cooler bag so that they would make their way upstairs once I got home. I would normally do the dishes on site the morning of departure, but the weather made that nearly impossible for me to do. 

Once I had the tent organized for the night, I got undressed and settled into my cot. I still got a pretty decent signal on my cell phone and because I had stayed off of it for most of the day, it still had plenty of battery power. So I decided to watch a couple shows while falling asleep. I'm glad I decided to do this. It definitely made falling asleep alone in a tent much easier for me. I don’t know what time I fell asleep, but I slept pretty hard and when I woke up the next morning, my fan was still on which means the generator is powerful enough to run it for an entire night, a huge relief after the previous trip! However, it had very little power left, so it wouldn’t be very useful for a multi-night trip. I will need to come up with other solutions for this problem. 

I decided not to get dressed until I was ready to leave. I wanted to be as comfortable and dry as possible for the drive home. I started packing almost as soon as I woke up.  I started with the inside of the tent. I put the bedside bin on the front seat of my car and my backpack on the floor in front of it. The bedding mostly went to the dirty clothes bag which was put in the back seat. 

Once I had everything out of the tent, I folded the cot and put it in the trunk. Next, I moved the chair and the table to the outside of the tent under my tarp awning which impressively made it through the night. I did a quick sweep of the tent floor and took the tent down, bagged it up and put it in the duffle bag which also stayed in the back seat.

I sat in my chair for a bit and thought about the failures and successes of this trip. For one thing, I managed to stay dry in constant rain for 24 hours. Success! I also learned a lot about how I want this next year of camping to go. I know I need to find a better way to power my fan and later my heater in these primitive campsites. I’ve looked into some solar powered fans or generators, but I also don’t want to weigh down my pack too much. On that same note, I also learned that I’m capable of downsizing my gear A LOT without sacrificing any of my comfort on site. This is huge as I start to transition to hiking and kayaking trips this next year. Every pound matters when you’re carrying everything on your back or trying to keep your kayak afloat. 

As the rain started to come down a bit more, I decided to finish packing and head home. I put the table and the chair in the trunk and started to take down the tarp. I had to move quickly because this is the part where I was 100% going to get wet. And I got soaked, but I got the tarp packed up quickly. I got into my seat wet and just changed into a dry shirt before I left. As I drove home I reflected a bit more about this trip. It’s difficult to explain to people why I enjoy these camping trips so much. All people heard when I got home was that it rained the entire time and I was alone in the woods for 24 hours. But it’s so much more than that for me. 

I’m not sure if it's a point of pride or what, but there’s something about being able to concisely pack just enough to create a temporary, peaceful home in the middle of nature. It’s as if I am fulfilling some primitive instinct. Regardless of why I love it, I do love it. I will keep going and keep reporting back here for as long as I can stand it. 

Stay Dirty, 

Stone