Ridin' herd on things

Do you ever have those days where you feel like you have to ride herd on everything and everybody? That the laundry, the dishes, the vacuuming and the grocery shopping are all about to stampede and you haven't even saddled your horse?

Yep. Been there, been trampled like that.

It's that time of year-

• band concerts
• dishes
• science fair projects
• laundry
• getting close to the end of semester study projects
• getting close to the end of the semester catch upon grading projects
• dishes
• dishes

How can a family who's eating most of their meals standing at the stove have so many dirty dishes? I'll spare you the visuals.

Add to the bawling herd a trip to Kansas for the holiday, a desire to cook some real holiday food, and fighting off the inner elf who wants to start putting up the Christmas decorations, and you have a drove of on-edge bossies who will spook and bolt at the smallest hint of an extra task on their already-too-full plates. I'm speaking metaphorically, of course. This is not a description of people I work with.

The last trip Philoboy and I made to Kansas we ran into this very thing. A herd of cattle, not bossy people I work with.

The disparity between city life and rural life is enough to give you whiplash. I've run into some boss cows in the city, usually on the PTA committees or at youth soccer games, but never a herd of cows.

There were cows coming and going. Cows almost as far as you could see. 

And cowboys riding herd on the cows. Somehow their herd ridin' looked a lot more fun than my city herd ridin'.

And I couldn't pass up the opportunity to show you the dirty windows of the Travelin' Van.  That's adventure miles dirt, ma'am.



"Dang paparazzi- we can never re-locate without one of them hangin' out a vehicle window with their dang camera...."

Ahhh, I'm looking forward to the holiday, going back home to a place where horses are the vehicles, walking is the pace of life, and cows are the most interesting thing around.


    Happy Trails, and may you always find a whole herd of adventures!

Ain't no sand on me!

I try out as much new gear as outdoor gear retailers, manufacturers and Hubby will let me. I like a lot of what I try, but I come across very few items that make me go, “Wow-this is everything it’s advertised to be,” The sand rug from CGear made me jump up and down and go WOW.

The company provided the 6' x 6' sand rug free of charge for my review. It arrived on my doorstep complete with its own small bag of sand and a huge dose of skepticism from my not-so-inner cynic.

Wow. Did I say that already? This thing really works.

The mats were originally developed by the military to create dust-free landing pads for helicopters. I had no helicopter on hand, but I do have a dusty husband and a whirling teenager. Together they can definitely raise a cloud of dust or tear up most any gear, given enough time.

Hubby poured the little bag of sand onto the rug. I would have liked a wheelbarrow load, but there was none to be had. Hubby brushed his hand across the pile of silica and poof! It was gone.

Hubby went Wow. He lifted the rug and there was the sand.

No sand came back up. Wow.

I mounded the pile of sand up under the rug, and had The Whee sit on the rug, on top of the sand pile, and just be herself. In other words, twist, wiggle and squirm. No matter how much she ground the rug into the sand, no sand came back up. Wow. I think I said that already.

Does it matter which side is up for the mat to work? Yes, it does, although even upside down it did a better job of taking away the sand than any beach towel or bamboo mat I’ve ever used. Not all the sand went through, but what fell through did not come back up.

Here's what I think about the sand mat:

I would recommend it to others, especially beach goers. We ain't got a lot of beach in Oklahoma, but this rug is enough to make me want to drive to the coast.

I would buy it for others. At $59.88, the best price I've found for it so far (Amazon), I'll only it buy it for people I really like, but I think it's worth every penny.

I think I'll stop avoiding the beach now.

I’m tickled I had the opportunity to try it!

See the rug and other sand-free products at http://www.cgear-sandfree.com/

Girls Day out

Some of my camping buds and I did a little backpacking at Arrowhead State Park this past weekend. You should go there. It's beautiful and unpopulated. Just don't try to find it by a map search- Yahoo and Google are not familiar with this park.

I want to wake up to something like this for the rest of my life. I need to figure out how to convince my employer to move my desk out here.

Breakfast tastes better out in the open.

uh-oh. if you give a moose a muffin it wants another...

 

After breakfast we packed up,

And headed out.

We walked something like 82 miles that day. Or maybe it was between 8 and 2 miles that day.

Fun and friends make me better able to deal with the frenzy.

B, E, me, 'n V.

I think I shall survive for another week.

      Happy Trails, and may your life be packed with adventure!



Round and round and round and...

When I was in Arkansas  a couple of week ago (just a couple? It seems like months...) I spent some time following elk around, trying to get that one great picture. This is no different than being at home...

The rest of the time I spent trying not to get lost. A better way of saying that was I tried to get un-lost. No, that's not right either. I wasn't lost, I just couldn't find my way out...

The elk disappear into the trees during the day, coming out around sunset and again at sunrise, so I had to find something to do in between. There are several short dayhikes around the area, some of which I had already hiked on a previous trip. Locals kept telling me to go to Hawksbill Crag, a rock outcropping also known as Whitaker Point. Sounded good to me.

This is what the crag looks like on the Arkansas tourism site:

This is what it looked like when I was there:

I want to go back when it looks like the first picture. Or maybe I could just get proficient with Photoshop?  It's much more likely that I'll hike a thousand miles before 'Shop and I get friendly.

I had a trail map, one of those fabulously expensive, tear-proof, waterproof, lasts as-long-as-you-wanna hike maps. I used it to find the trailhead, and then promptly went amnesiac that it was it my pack. It's important to the story that you remember that I forgot.

You don't have to go hiking to get lost, just read this blog, huh?

To get to the crag, you go down a trail, like this:

Let me just note here that apparently trail markers are very, very, expensive, because every trail I've been on the state of Arkansas is severely blaze deficient. Really, folks, don't be so stingy with them!  I'll buy you some of those little plastic squares!!!

To complicate things further, not much in the woods was changing color yet, but the leaves that were changing, were the exact color of the trail blazes. Oh yes.  Like this-do you see a blaze anywhere?!?!

I traipsed along the trail to the crag, and ate my lunch out on the end of it, like this: How's that for an office view?

and then I took a little nap, and headed back to the trailhead and a hamburger.

Except that it didn't work like that. I got to a switchback in the trail, a junction that I was pretty dang sure should take me over the top of the mountain to my vehicle, and couldn't see any trail.  No trampled leaves. No skid marks. And not a single dang blaze.  So I cast up and down the creekbed for a bit, starting to get a bit frustrated, and then went back to the switchback, the last known blaze location.

I looked up the way I had come from, and saw a faint trail off to the side. hmm, I don't remember that angle, but maybe it curves around and crosses the creek.  hi ho, hi ho, off through the woods we go.

It was like being hit with a tazer. I looked up and saw this:

Refer to crag picture at top of blog. I had ended up back at the rock. It was cool the first time, less so the second. Back I went to the switchback. At the junction I went back and forth on both directions of the switchback, and finally, waaaay down the creek saw a bit of orange. Remember that map in my backpack? I wish I had at this point.

lobbity lob through the trees, right along the bluff. Great view.  Don't stumble, it's a long way down.

Cool trail, neat rocks.  wait, I thought I've seen this one before. Sure feels like I'm going the same direction as before...

Welcome to the Twilight Zone episode, caught on Cave Mountain.

I've seen Whitaker Point enough times to last me the rest of my backpacking life. At that moment I took stock of the situation- I had a sleeping bag, water, food, cookstove, a whistle, a camera. I could survive several days out here if necessary, and it was starting to look like it would.

One more time back down the trail to the junction. Look up and down the creek. I KNOW I have to go over the top to get to my car. I KNOW I have an hour of daylight left. I KNOW that I'll be fine if I camp for the night. I KNOW that if I ever get out of here I'm petitioning the Arkansas legislature to raise park allocations so they can buy some damn trail markers.

I finally spotted a really big, flat rock halfway up the hill. I knew I had come across a really big flat rock, so I clawed my way up via the root system. Sure enough. It was my rock. I took off in the general direction of an assumed trailhead, and about a tenth of a mile later ran across an orange blaze. Not an orange leaf, but a real honest to goodness piece of plastic trail blaze. Hallelujah. I managed to turn a 2 mile trail into a 6 mile jaunt. No problem, it's all A.T. prep.

Rookie mistakes:

1. cockiness. Just because I'm an experienced hiker doesn't make me experienced on THIS trail.
2. didn't look at the trail map closely before starting. Refer to point 1.
3. wandered around instead of thinking it through. Refer to point 1.

Old person mistake:

1.  not taking a young person who would remember we had a map with us.

When I finally found my (beautiful, civilized, full of water and snacks) car, I nonchalantly threw my pack in the trunk, at which point the map slid out.  oh.  uh.  duh.

I took a sneaky peak, and sure enough, Cave Mountain trail is a loop. I'll be danged.

I want to go back with someone who's never been there, so I can look like an expert when they can't find the trail, and I blithely say "oh, it's this way, trust me." Know any rookies?

I felt like I earned my burger, so I stopped in Ozone, Arkansas at the Burger Barn.
A touch of Ozone was a fitting end to the Twilight Zone.

Packin' it on

To prepare for a backpacking or camping trip requires that I lay out every single piece of gear I own, strewn all across the garage floor. I have to see it all to choose what I’ll need. Camping gear is all about choices. This latest trip to Arkansas was no different. Will I take the Jetboil™ or the Esbit stove? Maybe both, so I have a back-up? Nope, just the Jetboil and some matches, thank you.

Will I take the light sleeping bag and freeze to death, or the heavy one that keeps me warm but takes up too much space and spills out of the bag like a polyester lava flow? If you grew up on a farm, you would know what I mean when I say “prolapsed uterus”. There’s only so much room in my pack, so lightweight one it is, even if I get cold. I'll put on my fleece at night.

My most recent adventure was a solo trip, so the food choices were easy. No one to please but me, which meant K bars and chai tea for breakfast, spaghetti for lunch and spaghetti for dinner. For all five days. With extra spaghetti for snacks. I firmly believe that freeze-dried spaghetti is the super food of backpacking.

Clothing choices are pretty easy- rain gear, one change of wool base layer to offset the lack of deodorant, a warm layer. It’s a solo trip, who needs deodorant? Socks. Done.

Tent. Will I take the ripped-up, duct-taped Eureka two man, or.. or.. or…. The choices are a little limited. Santa, I want a new Kelty Mesa for Christmas. Santa? Santa! Turn off the football game and pay attention!! I need a new tent!

Hiking shoes or boots? Maybe if wear the new boots- the unbroken-in, still smells-like-new- leather boots- the raw blisters will take my mind off the bug bites, thorn scratches and poison ivy. Naw. The old comfy Merrells it is.

Headlamp. Check.

Trail map. Check.

First aid kit. Check.

Water bottles and purifier. Check.

Sunscreen, bug spray, hat. Check, check, check.

Compass. Works great as a coaster. Might make a nice belt buckle. Declination is such an ugly word. Leave compass at home.

Now, cram all that gear into my Osprey pack. The folks over at the local Backwoods store routinely give me a hard time for hauling more than 25 pounds. As in “don’t carry more than 25% of your bodyweight, stupid.” Well, that’s a problem, you see. For me to carry everything I need, (or think I need) my pack is going to weigh 25-30 pounds. Every time. Which is 25 to 30 percent of my body weight.

I could ditch the tent and just use a tarp, but I have a dislike of slithery things sleeping with me. My sleeping bag only weighs a pound and half. It stays. The spaghetti definitely stays. Throw out the first aid kit and one water bottle. Saves me 13 ounces in weight. The bug spray doesn’t keep me from being eaten alive. Toss it. That saved me 6 ounces. Total weight lost- 19 ounces.  Uh, one pound plus.

The other solution is for me to gain more weight, so that my pack would be a smaller percentage of my body weight. That’s my current strategy. Three Gigi’s cupcakes a day to pack on some heft. Give that pack hip belt someplace solid to rest.

Alright, weight problem solved. Buckle on that pack, girl, we’re off to the cupcake shop! More choices, you say? No problem, gimme one of each!

Don't be a bully!

Although it's nice to watch wildlife, it's even better when the wildlife is doing something. When I was in Arkansas elk viewing, the rut had just began. That meant there was a lot of pawing, snorting, stomping, chasing, challenging, bugling, and herding going on.

I watched this big guy go cut a cow from a neighboring herd and run her back into his harem.

"Back in the kitchen, woman!"  She does not look pleased about the current state of affairs...

While he was busy stealing the cow, these two bulls got into a little tussle. I figure they had to do it to preserve their manhood, seeing as how the other guy was a lot bigger, older, and meaner.

"Hey-let's pretend like we're fighting, so we don't notice him stealing our cow and have to do something about it."

But then one of them wandered too close to Big Bubba's gal pals, and the big boy re-directed the young'un back to his own side of the meadow. Watch the intensity (and I apologize for the shaky videography!)

The Big Guy really, really wanted to fight someone. Anyone. Please, any takers? He also wanted an up close and personal encounter with some of the cows, but they weren't having any part of it, so he took his frustration out on the brush.

Listen to this calf and cow calling to one another, when they got separated and she was trying to get the calf to cross the road and find her. I kinda know how the little guy feels. I spent a good part of one afternoon circling the top of Cave Mountain before I figured out it was loop trail.

Man, from this angle it would be easy to mistake this fella for a bear!

"You girls stay put. I'm gonna go find some punks to intimidate,"

              Happy Trails, and may adventure always be in view!

Bugle Boy of 'Campany' B

Last weekend I ran away from home. Philoboy has a standing offer to run away with me, but he mumbled something about being too busy to go camping.

Please. If I ever say I am too busy to go camping, someone shake me till I come to my senses. He's messing with the moiety of this relationship.

The upside of a solo trip is that I pack food that only I like. I eat spaghetti for breakfast. There's not a lot of meat in the food cache. Philo might shrivel up if he doesn't have meat.

My destination was the Boxley Valley in Arkansas, where elk have been reintroduced after dying out several dacades ago. In fact, they've been reintroduced twice. The second time it stuck and the herd has grown and thrived.

The first day I was there it was raining and chilly, but that meant the elk stayed out in the open for most of the day, instead of retreating to the trees after sunup.

The bugling was amazing. From mountaintop to mountaintop, from one meadow to the next, I've never heard so many bulls at once. The mist and drizzle just added to the eeriness and wonder.

Bulls challenged and bluffed and charged and pawed, and...

"Hey. I'm not taking this lying down. Oh wait, maybe I am."

The town of Ponca is located at the north end of the Boxley Valley. People line the road to take photos of the elk. There's a one-pump gas station. There are no restaurants. Elk tourism has not made an inroad into the local economy yet. Take snacks. Fill up the tank before you get there, it's a long ways to civilization.


"Hey there, gorgeous. Want to come over to my meadow?"

"Oh good grief!  You bulls are all the same! Can't you see I'm busy?!"

If you like hunting with a camera, this is the place to be.

Happy Trails, and may your adventures introduce you to something wonderful!

Fozzils are fun.

Fozzils are fun.  Fozzils are flat.  Fozzils are for food.  Fozzils are flat-out ingenious.

Fozzils are plastic dinnerware that snaps together, unsnaps, and folds completely flat.

It comes with a plate, a bowl, a cup, and a spoon. I acquired my set courtesy of Backwoods, when I asked the manager if she had any new things she'd like me to try out. I would live in the Backwoods store if they would let me.

It took The Whee about .07 seconds to figure out what was going on with the Fozzils and put them together. It took Philoboy about 12 minutes to realize that if he wanted to eat, there was 'some assembly required'.

Look Ma, it's  so easy I can do it with my eyes closed!

The spoon worked great for oatmeal, and ok for noodles. We found that liquids had a tendency to run back down through the handle and onto your hand. And it wasn't very comfortable in your mouth. We chucked the spoon.

The dishes, however, broached no complaints. Since it's a plastic polymer material, and isn't insulated, you can't hold a bowl full of boiling hot soup in your hand, but the bowls are sturdy enough you can hold the sides without fear of it collapsing or unsnapping.

I took them backpacking this last weekend, when the night temperatures hit 48 degrees. They fit flat in my food bag, and were a "snap" to use and clean (sorry, I've been poor pun deficient for a while now).

But I wanted to know what would happen when they got really cold. Would the plastic get brittle and break? Since there was no blizzard in sight, and I have an aversion to camping in the cold anyway, my solution was to put them in the freezer for 30 minutes. My whole life is just one big laboratory.

They worked just fine. The material was stiffer, but not brittle. I snapped and unsnapped them several times. That will be the final test that only time will tell- how long will the snaps hold up with frequent use? The only way to find out will be for me to go camping frequently. Oh darn.

The Fozzil set retails at Backwoods for $17.95.  I think it makes the cut for backpacking, for your picnic basket, and the Whee thinks it works great in her lunch box. I think I want my Fozzils back!

stuff the stuff

It's possible that we might have too much camping/hiking/backpacking/outdoor gear. I don't really believe that, but I just wanted to lay out the possibility.

For me to take a solo camping trip to Ponca, Arkansas, required a lot of deconstruction before the construction could begin. Gear inventory. It's what I do. I had to move the vehicles, the grill, the box of my children's mementos and Philoboy out of the garage to have enough room to spread it all out. Philoboy's office is in the garage. Somehow, it's important for you to know that.

At one time we got all organized and made camping tubs with cookware, and dinnerware, and emergency ware. Then we made smaller, weekend tubs. Then we made backpacking tubs.Then Philoboy needed a lighter for the grill, and it's been downhill ever since. I can't find anything.

Except for our duct-taped tent. I can't seem to get rid of that thing. It's lived through hailstorms, windstorms, I'm-feeling-fat storms. It doesn't even leak at the duct tape. It's good advertisement for Eureka tents. "Your dome away from home."

Hey, that's pretty good! I think Eureka should hire me to do their advertising!

All this 'gearing up' was so I could drive six hours to meet this guy:

Ah. Now I have your attention. Stay tuned for the whole story. There's adventure, mystery, getting almost lost. And that was just leaving my driveway.

High and dry

I've been spending my free time playing with some gear samples I received from the Backwoods store (at no cost, I must add. Yes, I must). There was quite a variety of things to play with: a pillow, some dinnerware, a porta-potty (oh, I know you can't wait for that one!) and a little dry pouch.

The little pouch is made by Seal Line. The packaging shows a cell phone in it. I found that it held my cheapo cell phone just fine, but the Whee's Blackberry was too wide too fit.  Weren't we trying to get tinier phones a few years back?  Why are they all getting mondo size again?

I started putting the Seal Line pouch through its paces on a short camping trip to Kansas, when we were met by a steady drizzle. I needed to be sure it wasn't leaking, so in the best scientific method, I put a receipt in it and hung it outside the tent for the night.

This did several things.
1- it put the pouch out in the drizzle. The ink on the receipt would smear if it got damp. 
2-The bright shiny pouch might attract some raccoons for pictures.
3-The gas receipt proved I went away from home.  I gotta get my affirmation where I can.

The next morning, no sign of dampness in the pouch. Too easy. Time to move on to step two.

Step two was to put something in the pouch that took up space and actually put pressure on the seal. Enter the Whee's Ipod.  Duh- you didn't think I was gonna use MY Ipod, did you?!

Conveniently, it also rained the same day.  That in itself was reason to celebrate, considering how dry it's been here.  I celebrated by throwing the pouch outside and leaving it overnight.  (Contrary to what you're thinking I don't do all my testing while I'm asleep, but it has its advantages).

The next morning, no dampness inside the pouch.  It's time  to get tough.

What's the scariest thing you can do to an electronic device?  Give it to a tweenager, of course!  Instant limited lifespan.  So I tried to imagine what The Whee would do with this.  She would... clip it onto her backpack.  And then... she would swing the backpack around really fast as she was walking.  And the pouch would fly off and smack into the concrete, killing the electronic device.  (Do you hear the voice of past experience in this?)

Ramp it up by having the device fly off and land in flowing water.  Oh yeah.  Now we're talking.

We had sufficient rain that the gutters were running pretty well (scientific testing sometimes means using what's at hand).  I threw the pouch-literally-into the gutter outside my house.  Covered by two inches of running water.  Dirty running water.

And left it for 10 minutes.  Still dry. I made a short clip of the attempted drowning, but it didn't want to load into the blog. Bleh. The specs on this waterproof pouch state it can be submerged up to one meter for 30 minutes without leaking. We-e-e-ell, that called for one more test. 

I call it the Philo test.  It's even better than the tweenager test.  Philo has dropped more things overboard than I can count. Phones. Car keys. Eyeglasses.  I go fishing with him just for thrill of waiting to see what he'll lose next. And because I carry all the spares.

I took the pouch to the lake, fastened it to my stringer, which is about 3' long, and hung it overboard from my kayak.  There are not pictures because I am well aware of the limitations of my coordination. The possibility of losing the pouch, the paddle or the Pentax was high, and at least one of those was going to be bad. Not to mention that Lake Thunderbird is the color of chocolate milk and you can't see through the water. And I'm talking the cheap chocolate milk, not the good stuff.

I was more than happy with the outcome.

Final analysis:

• when you get the Seal Line pouch, the first thing you do after opening it is throw away the dinky ball chain and put a substantial carabiner on it.
• don't buy expensive electronic for tweenagers. This has nothing to do with the Seal Line, but it's important information for you to have.
• don't try to overstuff the pouch. Cramming something too fat into a too-small space is ugly. Think Spanx.
• The pouch is tweenager and Philoboy proof.  That's saying a lot.
• It's touch screen compatible, if you have one of those touchy-feely phones.
• use it for phones, i-pods, i.d.'s, dentures, and important papers to get you through customs.
• fasten it to your backpack, your kayak, or your tent, if you need to know which one is yours.
• It comes in three sizes. I tested the small, but there's also a medium and a large, if you can't bear to leave your e-reader behind while you're in the wilderness.
• At $19.95, you might think it's a little pricey, but it's cheaper than losing your cell phone, and WAY cheaper than drowning your Kindle. Just ask the Whee.