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.