Camping

Camping. Spending time in the woods. Having a fire. What can go wrong?

How will Coronavirus change my camping plans for this year?

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How will Coronavirus change my camping plans for this year? ⛺

There is a lot of unknowns about the Coronavirus and how it’s going to play out but I don’t expect major changes to my travel plans compared to other years. 💭

Simply said, when I’m wilderness camping I’m already quite self isolated and don’t necessarily interact with a lot of people except maybe when I visit the store 🏬 or get gas ⛽. But I still anticipate significant impacts on my summer plans…

  • I expect cheaper gas prices than I had originally budgeted for which will save me money 💵.
  • I’ll probably want to buy all of my groceries at once 🍏 close to home to minimize the time I’m in public at grocery stores.
  • Will public swimming 🏊 pools be closed? I might have to find alternative venues in the backcountry to cool off and go swimming in this summer.
  • If Coronavirus continues into the summer I should look at getting a box of latex gloves for pumping gas. 👋 While I’m no germahobe, I don’t want to get Coronavirus if I can avoid it. I have nitrile gloves for butchering game 🔪but they’re expensive and kind of nasty to burn (they produce trace amounts of cyanide gas) after they’re tossed.
  • I am still looking at getting a screened in tent 🎪 to use for extended camping trips, to provide more comfort on rainy days and during black fly season.
  • Does work from home 🏡 mean potentially I could work from camp using my smartphone and when I get a laptop with mobile internet? 📱 Interesting possibility. Maybe take two weeks camping at the Green Mountain National Forest? Why not!
  • Will there be greater demands for backcountry campsites ⛺, especially roadside sites should state campgrounds be closed this summer due to Coronavirus? Will this mean that more people will be competing for prime roadside sites? More litter and irresponsible campers in the back country? More law enforcement?
  • Will places like Moose River Plains and Piseco – Powley Road be on the cutting block 📉 due to reductions in state funding due to losses relating to the Coronavirus PAUSE? Does this mean gates will be locked or roads less maintained?

I Slept Outside for a Week and It Changed My Life (Really)

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I Slept Outside for a Week and It Changed My Life (Really)

Both of these victories were possibly a result of being lulled to sleep by, and waking up to, disorienting new surroundings. I kept my hopes low for the second night, when I’d be a little more used to the pattern and I’d be camping alone. I thought I might lie awake thinking about The Blair Witch Project. Nope. This time I was out in five minutes, barely surfaced from my deep sleep when I heard (I hope) deer circling my tent in the middle of the night, and hit my snooze button just once the next morning. After the third restful night, I abandoned my sleep anxieties and started evangelizing: “My sleep has been amazing,” I told anyone unfortunate enough to ask how the experiment was going. “I think my circadian rhythm is already changing. You can just feel it, you know?”

I know I sleep a lot better after a night in the woods. In the winter months, when I'm home all of the time, I find it hard to sleep, waking up early, although lately I've improved my sleep a lot by going to bed early and getting up early.

Breakfast at Basecamp

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WV Outdoors is an interesting channel on bushcraft and back country camping in West Virgina. People think West Virginians have a strong accent, but as you can tell from this video, the Northern West Virigina accent is pretty similar to Rural Eastern New York.

My propane lantern kept getting dimmer and dimmer

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My propane lantern kept getting dimmer and dimmer. Not only that but it was blowing black smoke and the globe was getting covered with soot from a bad air – gas mixture. 

I disassembled the lantern a few weeks ago and removed a tablespoon of mud and oily residue from the air intake which is hidden under the plastic cover near the brightness control knob. Propane in cold weather can get very oily and it attracts mud like a giant magnet. This is particularly true when your using it at temperatures below freezing with long hoses from a 20 lb tank. 

Now it’s super bright like new again.

A top concern for this long-weekend in the wilderness will be the mud

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A top concern for this long-weekend in the wilderness will be the mud … 🐷

Rain in the winter, especially after the snow means things will be muddy. I will try to camp somewhere elevated and stay out of the mud as much as possible, to avoid disturbing the ground, but some may not be possible. 🦺 I’ve camped out there enough in the rain to know what areas flood and are muddy, but the ground this time will be particularly weak being that it is mid-winter.

Become a 2020 DEC Campground Ambassador in the Adirondacks

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Become a 2020 DEC Campground Ambassador in the Adirondacks

Love camping in the Adirondacks? Share your passion for the great outdoors next summer by volunteering for the DEC Campground Ambassador Program and you’ll enjoy two weeks of free camping in exchange.

Somebody I know from school 🚸 passed this along knowing how much I love to camp ⛺ and spend time in the wilderness. But I hate campgrounds. My comment:

I don't do campgrounds if at all possible, I don't like camping anywhere I am in ear shot or eye shot of others. I like to be able to have big fires, listen to music, drink beer, pee where ever I want to, burn trash, shoot guns, and pretty much do whatever and whenever I please. Things that are generally not considered neighborly behavior. In other words, camp at least a quarter mile from anyone else and often much more remote wild country then that. 

I'll stay at a rustic campground with pit privies when it's the only option but I try to avoid even that for wilderness camping. But I really don't like doing that if at all possible. I live in the suburbs and I have neighbors when I want to be around other people.

While a lot of my colleagues are settling down buying houses and raising families I'm living in a jam on rather threadbare moldy apartment on the bus line. Saving and investing money wherever I can for when I don't have family locally, move out west or down south into a small off grid cabin heated by wood I chop myself and a small solar system on sufficient acerage that I can have bonfires, burn my trash, hunt and trap, four wheel and hobby farm. In a state with low taxes and not a lot of regulation or zoning codes.