Sep 28, 2018
Hiking at Jacob’s Well!
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Hiking at Jacob’s Well!
The night I have had, good lord.
My neighbors at the campsite were a group of unchaperoned 18 year olds wth two bottles of vodka, a Bluetooth speaker, and an extensive playlist of pop country. They were celebrating graduation, and they were the eighteenest— lots of drama, lots of puking, lots of super deep discussions— and it wasn’t like I needed a ton of sleep, so I left them to their celebrating and listened to podcasts in my tent while half-sleeping.
I could, by the way, write you guys a novel about Anthony, friend to many, boyfriend to one, who had gotten mad about something and walked off to hike in the dark. Everyone blames themselves for Anthony’s sadness.
Anyway, if nothing else this trip has given me reason to feel very smug, since before I went to bed I secured camp— put my pack and shoes in the tent’s external vestibule and lashed my camp chair to a guy wire so it wouldn’t blow away. Just in case it rained.
At 3am, while the Neighbors were playing Cards Against Humanity, a thunderstorm blew up out of nowhere. It had been quite hot, so I’d had several tent panels zipped down to the mesh to let a breeze blow through. When the storm hit, it was definitely a thing.
Neighbors: *yelling, madness*
Me: *reaches outside to pull pack into tent*
Neighbors: *chasing blown-around chairs*
Me: *reaches outside a second time, unlashes chair and pulls, collapsing, into tent*
Neighbors: SAVE THE SPEAKERS
Me: *slips into sleeping bag, zips tent panels over mesh, enjoys the rain*
It’s silly to feel smug, but I do. Also, I’m pleased I pitched the tent to hold up to the wind, which was not inconsiderable.
Gosh, I hope Anthony wasn’t caught out in the rain. He should know he is loved by many!
Breakfast is up! First time cooking on the camp stove was a measured success. Heating water counts!
peoriarhetoriapeoria replied to your post “The night I have had, good lord. My neighbors at the campsite were a...”
I'm so proud that your tent has a vestibule. Last time I went camping I slept on a cement slab.
I love my vestibule! I can’t recommend this tent highly enough, actually, it’s such a great combination of conveniences, I’m sad they don’t make it anymore. It’s the “flashlight” tent by Sierra Designs:
It takes about five minutes to set up, and most of that is hammering the stakes. One side has a panel that zips down to reveal mesh, and the other side has a door that does similar so it can either be a nylon panel or a mesh panel or open. The white bit is a built-in rain screen, and the bit that sticks out (behind “backcountry edge”) is the vestibule, which protects a third mesh panel (this one can’t be zipped up, so it’s not a good cold weather tent, but I don’t like cold-weather camping anyway).
The vestibule is just big enough to fit a pair of shoes and a pack, and in light rain you don’t even need to bring the pack inside, the vestibule will keep it totally dry. Plus there are mesh pockets at the head end of the tent to store stuff like your phone, charger, etc.
And the reason it’s called a “flashlight” is that it has a white pocket that hangs from the ceiling, into which you can place a headlamp or small flashlight, and it illuminates the entire interior of the tent. Great for nighttime reading or early-morning organizing. Plus the tent is just tall enough that I can move around in it comfortably -- this morning because everything was wet, I literally packed up about 80% of my bag from inside the tent.
Anyway yes, great tent, great design -- I went from lying in it with all the mesh exposed for a cross-draft in the 80F+ evening heat to zipping the panels halfway up to keep the colder breezes off my butt in the later evening to zipping all the way up when the thunderstorm hit and keeping dry and warm but not humid because of the vestibule mesh.
FWIW, the burning Doritos smell mostly like burning, not much else. Not sure if they will actually ignite the firewood, but it was free, so if it doesn’t at least I have contributed to SCIENCE.
Got the camping bin out, did the inventory, and packed up for backpacking next month! I’m picking up a stove and cookset from REI either later today or tomorrow, but otherwise I’m pretty good on supplies.
Sadly not. Needed some kindling, I think...
archwrites replied to your post “The night I have had, good lord.”
If the latter, does this mean they did the dirty reconcilably?
I SEE WHAT U DID THERE AND I DO NOT APPROVE. :D
marmotsomsierost replied to your post “The night I have had, good lord.”
reconciliation dirty sounds like an excellent punk band name.
LOL YES it’s a band that covers only Beatles songs but like, in a punk way.
lysapadin replied to your post “The night I have had, good lord.”
I would not be that age again for the world and everything in it
If I could be that age again but know then what I know now, I would, but even then I would need some kind of extra compensation. :D
niennanir replied to your photoset “Breakfast is up!”
Let us know how this works out for you, this is one of the more sturdy looking rigs I've seen and I need one to recommend for hurricane season
It worked pretty well but it is godalmighty loud, and has no real setting other than “super fucking powerful”. Like, there’s a spigot you can turn to raise or lower the heat but even the low heat is very intense.
For reference both the stove and the pan are GSI Outdoors brand -- the stove is the Glacier model, and the pan is the Pinnacle Solo. The Pinnacle comes with a cup, a collapsible spork, a strainer lid, and a “welded” fabric carrying case that doubles as a sink; it also has enough room in the pan that even with the cup and spork, you can also store a small fuel canister and a small stove inside it. Both the Pinnacle and the Glacier are super light and the Glacier was easy to set up.
The only real problem I encountered, which may not matter if you’re storing them for emergency use, is that the Glacier doesn’t quite fit inside the cup -- it’s just slightly too wide. On the other hand, the wideness contributes to the stability of it.
memprime replied to your photoset “Breakfast is up!”
That looks top heavy...
It does look that way but the fuel canister is actually somewhat heavy, compared to the lightweight stove and cookpot (it’s aluminum). The broad base on the fuel helps a lot, too -- I wouldn’t want to light it or cook with it in high wind, but it was very stable on a still day.
shazrolane replied to your photoset “Sadly not. Needed some kindling, I think…”
Agreeing with niennanir - you definitely need kindling. But hey, I think I see some scorching? So you got some decent heat
I did actually -- I was wondering for a good ten minutes if the logs were actually going to catch or not. Some kindling would have been ideal, but I think if you HAD TO and you had like four bags of Doritos you could probably get a decent fire going.
winneganfake reblogged your photoset and added:
Nope, that’s the Doritos.
beowulf22121 reblogged your photoset and added:
Lads and Ladies, the voice of experience.
LOL I was going to say, @winneganfake sounds like they know whereof they speak.
prairie-grass replied to your post “That was a MUCH LONGER HIKE”
'which I'm not but I said yes' sometimes I don't understand why you don't work for the cia.
I once had a conversation with my mother about that, where she asked if I didn’t REALLY work for the CIA because of the kind of work I do. I told her no, of course not, and she said, “Well, that’s something that someone who works for the CIA would say, isn’t it?”
rodiniaorzetalthepenquin replied to your post “That was a MUCH LONGER HIKE THAN EXPECTED. I didn’t misjudge the...”
I'm a teacher. I *never* have nice pants!
Yeah, I thought the pants thing was weird, but maybe like, teachers have nice CAMPING pants? I was wearing actual facts hiking pants made out of moisture-wicking synthetic rather than, say, jeans like most of the other people in the area.
driedfrogpills4me replied to your photo “Well, the train isn’t moving yet”
I love that you do these. I haven't read one of these books for decades - fell out of the genre - but your posts bring it all back, for better and worse ��
Reading a Goldy story is always an....experience. :D I feel like mystery writers are often particularly proud of using their books as personal therapy, and not particularly subtle about it...
butterflyslinky replied to your photo “Well, the train isn’t moving yet...”
Considering both the priest and the groom vanished, I think the groom killed the priest and is now on the run. He will escape to Norway, grow a beard, and then return to marry his One True Love, Julian the Bisexual Poolboy. ...I've never read one of these books except through your posts.
TOM SCHULTZ (the groom) WOULD NEVER. He is a ridiculous ideal of a man -- he’s into gourmet cooking, antiques, and JUST LOVING GOLDY like he’ll DIE if he doesn’t. :D
redshoesnblueskies reblogged your photo “Well, the train isn’t moving yet”
#...questioned for...the sake of her shoes?#as a gross offensce agaist wedding footwear?#TO PREVENT FURTHER GRIEF FOR THE STRICKEN AND CLEARLY INATTENTIVE BRIDE?#why? why should they have questioned the shoe thing Sam?#:D
LOL! I only meant, like, surely someone should have said “Hey your street clothes and walking shoes are right here in this room, maybe let’s have you change before you have to go hiking around an acre of wooded land in Colorado looking at a crime scene”. Like, later she looks at her ruined dress and is sad at the metaphor, but that doesn’t feel like a good enough reason to have made her wear her wedding dress to a crime-scene in the first place.
There are often these moments in these books -- and I’m in the first few, so perhaps it’s a writerly learning curve -- where things happen not so much because they’re rational as because they’re clearly meant to forward some portion of the plot. Like going to the crime scene in a wedding dress, or catering a dinner she wasn’t even supposed to cater just because one of the pastors asked her, despite her having just been BEATEN WITH A STICK. Or how she keeps calling 911 to get in touch with a specific detective, which annoys him, but apparently it’s just for the sake of him being annoyed in the story, because at ANY TIME he could give her the precinct’s phone number or his desk number.
janedrewfinally replied to your photoset “Breakfast is up! First time cooking on the camp stove was a measured...”
All of this reminds me if the super-cute slice-of-life anime “Laid-Back Camp” (pretty much what it says on the tin).
Oh neat, I’ll check it out!