Wednesday, January 30, 2013

New gear, looking forward to camping again soon

It has been cold. Given, that is to be expected in January, but it doesn't stop it from being unpleasant. As such, we haven't done much camping recently. In fact, even as i'm posting this, we still haven't been camping since the last post. I have however gotten some ideas for camping over the winter. For instance, I got a hammock for Christmas which is designed for backpacking. It rolls up into a very small container, and is amazingly comfortable. I believe it will be rather nice in campouts in the future.

  It is quite versatile. We are planning to do some more backpacking in the near future, the stories of which I will post here. If I can, I'm gonna use the hammock and a tarp instead of a tent of some of those trips, as it is much lighter. Although some places a hammock won't work, and tents will be more practical.
I am still hoping for a roof rack in the future, but perhaps that is just a wish, as they are quite expensive.


Here you can see it's quite comfortable, and also very large. I can lay diagonally in it and be flat, or lay straight and have that gentle curve. Its very comfortable, truly I cannot even really describe how much so.
Also, you can see here the tarp over it. Eagle's Nest Outfitters also make a rain fly for hammocks, but it's expensive, and this tarp rolls up rather small for its size. I may yet get the rain fly though, as it is very light. It was raining in this picture, and neither I nor any of my gear got wet.

If you look at the top picture, you can see that the way I rig it up creates a rope above the Hammock, which is both to avoid cutting the rope and to have a place to hang the tarp. It also allows a place to hang a light.

McDill geocache

While this isn't camping, it was still an outdoor adventure, so I figured i'd post it anyway. There is a fairly new geocache (a GPS based scavenger hunt game) on the McDill point lookout, a few miles south of Cheaha off the Pinhoti trail. The three of us (dad, Leah, [My awesome and beautiful girlfriend] and I) went out to find it. The intended way to get there would be to go down the Pinhoti. However, we decided it would be quicker to go straight up the side of the mountain. It was a pretty hard climb, nearly 1000 vertical feet, but we did eventually make it to the top. Once there, we were treated to this view:
Which is pretty epic. That is the actual McDill point lookout there. We stopped to eat upon arriving there.

After we stopped, we followed the GPS over to where the geocache actually was. Leah found it after I sorta bumbled around for a while.

After that, followed the trail a little ways and found this

Which is a crashed airplane that several of us had sought after in the past. I have heard several different stories as to what happened in this crash, but I truly have no idea.

I wrote this weeks ago when we went and did this, but for some reason it never posted. So here it is.