Laying Low

I took the weekend off for Thanksgiving and am back with some sort of throat cold. I'm going to lay low today and hopefully get a few new posts tomorrow.

Be well!

Happy Thanksgiving to All

Happy Thanksgiving to All - go camping this weekend!

Winter time trip

My scout group is now planning a trip in January and it will only cost gas! I hope I am able to go.

Cabela's

I received a $10 off coupon in the mail from Cabela's yesterday. For the first time it doesn't have a minimum spend requirement to use it. Too cool. My gaming buddy is coming over this Saturday and I'm going to see if I can drag him over there early to spend my card.

Nothing to do with camping

This has nothing to do with camping but affects everyone who works in the U.S. I'm out looking for work and decided to look at elance.com which you bid on a job and the low bid wins the contract.

All of the bidders from India are bidding on jobs at $2.00, $3.00, and $5.00 an hour. It's no wonder we're all getting booted from jobs to overseas workers.

Make the Cut

When camping in the woods, there are many reasons to have good cutting tools on hand. This would include everything from axes, saws, and kitchen and pocket knives. All cutting implements should be kept sharp for the most efficient use.

Axes and Saws

• Hand saws are used for cutting downed logs into usable pieces for firewood. Generally speaking you would not sharpen saw teeth but rather replace with a new saw blade.
  
• Axes are used for splitting the cut logs into smaller pieces if needed. I would estimate if the logs are greater than 3 inches in diameter you'll want to split them. Axes are easily sharpened using oiled sharpening stones the same way you would sharpen a pocket knife. Oiling the blade before and after each use will keep it from rusting.

Kitchen Knives

• As with your kitchen knives at home you'll want to keep them as sharp as possible for best use. Depending on the quality of the knives you'll want to keep them protected while not in use to keep them rust free if they're not stainless steel. I would recommend sharpening before each use.

Personal Use Knives

• Whether you carry a sheath knife or pocket knife they prove invaluable in the outdoors. As with the tools listed above, be sure to keep your knife sharp at all times. I prefer to use a series of oiled stones to sharpen each blade but there are also more modern products to sharpen them as well such as diamond files and the like. Another reason to keep them sharp is in case of an accident. If you should slip and cut yourself it's much better to be cut with a sharp blade since it will be a clean cut rather than with a dull knife which could tear your skin badly rather than a clean slice. Safe knife handling should prevent any such accident, however.
  

The Coolest Beans

The best baked beans I've ever had were cooked about 2 feet underground. We dug a hole and started a fire mixed with wood and charcoal. We burned the fire for about an hour to get a good base coal bed. Our cook did all the preparations for making a dutch oven full of baked beans from scratch. We placed the entire dutch oven in the ground and buried it in dirt. After about 3 hours of cooking we dug it up and enjoyed the greatest beans we've ever had.

Hot Potato

Don't have an oven on your camping trip but want some baked potatoes for your dinner? Poke some holes with a fork, wrap them in aluminum foil and toss into your camp fire. They'll cook in about the same time they would in the oven but to be safe I would check them every 15 minutes or so for internal firmness. If they're firm at any depth, they are not done and need to cook longer.

Very easy!

Cabin Camping?

Is staying in a cabin really camping? I think so because short of pitching the tent, all the other activities are exactly the same. Check out the poll and let me know what you think.

Let Me Slip Into A Dry...

Keep it dry. 'What?' you may ask. Everything! If you're expecting any precipitation keep your sleeping gear, tent floor, and clothing dry. If you think you may be venturing out into the unfortunate (or fortunate) weather to play in some snow, either protect the clothing you're wearing with water proofing material such as Goretex or simply pack extra clothes for when you return to camp.

When you're just sitting around in the site, you don't want to be there in wet clothes because you'll never get warm if it's cold out. This makes camping not so fun.