6 posts tagged “camping”

We spent a relaxing Memorial Day weekend in the woods along the Allegheny River just north of Kennerdell. The map above shows our hike in on Saturday morning in yellow (about 2 miles), and a red X around where we decided to camp. We were on a little bluff overlooking the River Trail, with a nice view of the river through the trees, but not very visible from the trail. I think only one of the passersby spotted our camp all weekend.

We spent a little time down at the river Saturday, but the riverbank just there was pretty muddy, so no really good place to sit and read. Did spot a yellow frog where a little stream emptied into the river. We mostly just relaxed Saturday afternoon and evening, and made up our own call for the Pens/Canes playoff game, since there was no cell service down in the river valley. The foil dinners were especially good this time... portabellas, fresh asparagus, onion, fresh tomato, prosciutto. Oh, and a bottle of homemade Cabernet Sauvignon. Excellent! There was a lot of foxfire right near our campfire later that night, but I couldn't get my camera to take a picture of it, just too dark.

 

There was a pretty heavy thunderstorm Sunday morning around sunrise, and our new tent fared very well; not a single leak! It stopped raining in time for breakfast, and then was nice all weekend after that. We brought along our Italian stovetop coffee maker, so we were able to have espresso with our pop tarts :-)  I found this pretty little orchid in the undergrowth back of our campsite, still moist from the rain.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And here's an early morning video from our campsite. There were many many birds singing, which unfortunately you can't hear very well, but you get an idea of our site, anyway. 

Later in the morning, we took a hike (marked in green on the map). As usual in this part of the world, we passed lots of old oil paraphernalia, relics of the oil heyday (for those who may not know, the first oil well was drilled in Titusville PA, just north of where we were, and the woods all around there and Oil City were full of oil wells for years; there still are a good many small ones running).

 

 

We scoped out a good campsite near Witherup Island, so we're going to keep that in mind for the big campout we're trying to organize for the end of June. It featured lots of flat area under hemlocks, and a steep descent to a nice pebbly riverbank, so we could do some wading. After we climbed to the top of the hill, I was able to check my cell messages, and learned from the kids' texts that the Penguins had won handily, and that part of our make-believe call had come true (I had allowed the Canes to score first, but I thought the Pens would then win 3-2; that was the score at one point, but then the Pens scored 3 more after that; must've been fun to watch!). We saw this tree growing around a rock along the Fisherman Cove Trail.

Dinner Sunday was tuna-noodles with leftover portabellas and canned peas, which worked pretty well, and I tried something new with a cheesy-garlic biscuit mix formed into one large biscuit and cooked in the skillet. It worked pretty well, though needed to be flatter. After dinner, we saw an osprey catch a fish from the river, which was very cool!

 

Monday morning we packed up after breakfast, and decided to hike back the long way (the pink line on the map, about 5 miles total), because we wanted to see more of the river, and also wanted to hike along the ridge on the Window Trail. Also, every bit of hiking is good training for the Rachel Carson Trail Challenge, which is less than 4 weeks away now! We had to finish putting out two campfires as we passed empty campsites along the trail, which is just ridiculous, a whole river-ful of water being right at hand they could have easily used...I guess that's what happens when sites are too accessible.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Part of the Rock Oak Trail goes past a deer exclosure, which is kind of interesting, so I took a picture. I think it's areas that have either been logged or had burned, and the State Forestry Dept fences it in to keep deer from overbrowsing the new little trees and undergrowth. To the right is the exclosure, to the left is where the deer have been allowed to browse.

 

Other than all this, we just mostly sat around and looked at the river (and I read "Night and Day" by Virginia Woolf, which I really liked, despite its un-Woolf-iness; I really enjoyed the characters). It being the holiday weekend, there were LOTS of motor boats and canoe flotillas, and lots of groups of campers making a good deal of noise downriver, but otherwise very relaxing. No decisions needed to be made, no work needed to be done...

 

One last fun thing before C and the girls leave...  Two summers ago we all went on a real backpack camping trip in the woods, but this year due to time constraints we came up with a campout in L's back yard. Still fun, but with bathrooms (and other amenities).

 

This was also a good dry run for our new little tent before we take it real camping in a couple weeks. I was able to single-handedly set it up in about 5 minutes or less - while the guys were still working on the big tent. It's a good comfortable size for the two of us.

 

 

More general photos follow...

 

I had brought along our standard camping breakfast items (instant oatmeal, GFIC, cocoa), but as it turned out L made blueberry pancakes & turkey bacon. Yes, we were really roughing it! But always fun to do stuff with the nieces...

What is the scariest experience you've had with Mother Nature?
Submitted by jacolily.

That would have to be the time I went canoeing on the Buffalo River in Tennessee with the Outing Society which I belonged to in college (Spring of 1979). I can't remember if it rained while we camped overnight, or if it had been raining a lot before our trip, but on the 2nd day of paddling on the river, all of a sudden we came upon a very very fast and high section of water, and a tree was down over the river, and somehow most of us capsized. A couple of us landed on the far shore, and had to find a way back across, which eventually involved jumping in and swimming for our lives across the raging current. It was quite frightening at the time.

We did get all the canoes back on to shore (I think they got caught on some branches and so on, and some of the guys were able to rescue them), and most of the gear was salvaged from the river where it got shallower, but I never did recover the sleeping bag I had recently sewn myself from a Frostline kit (remember them?). [Frankly, I can't remember what I slept in the rest of the trip - I think someone must've loaned me their bag and one of the couples shared.]

That was it for the canoeing portion of our Spring Break then - after we were all safely on shore, we built a fire and dried out some, then hiked to where we saw a barn, and most of us stayed there while some of the others hiked out for help and transportation. (Remember this was long before cell phones.) For the rest of the week we drove to the mountains and just camped by a pretty little lake, so it still turned out to be a fun trip - but could've very easily been disastrous. I know now that we were attempting to do something beyond our skill level, never a good idea; really dumb, in fact. As the old commercial says, "Don't fool with Mother Nature!"

Nikki & I went down to Joseph-Beth at Southside Works today for a book reading and signing by David Sedaris. I'm glad we got there as early as we did (arrived at 12:30 for the 2:00 reading), because that allowed us to get a seat even after getting iced coffees and a snack at the adjoining Caribou Coffee. We decided to buy the book and get it signed, though we hadn't necessarily planned to do that - but it gave Nikki something to read while we waited. I picked a new Dave Barry book off the shelf and read that. It was really crowded, people standing all over the whole store by 2:00, including all around the upstairs, looking down. Just before starting, Mr Sedaris saw an older woman standing, and carried his nice comfy chair over for her.

So Mr Sedaris read one of the stories from his new book, When You Are Engulfed in Flames: he read Of Mice and Men, which was (sort of) about a news item about a flaming mouse. Very funny stuff, and very enjoyable to hear him read it. Then he pulled out a bunch of loose papers which he said was his diary, and read us excerpts from the past year or so. I suspect some of those items might eventually make it into books. Then he took questions, which was fun. In answer to one of the questions, we learned that he doesn't really like his writing that much, which I found interesting. There apparently are only a few of his stories he says he thinks are good. I wondered how he knows when he's done with a story, if he's always unhappy with it. I wish I had thought of that question earlier.

Then they called people up to stand in line by the letter on our tickets (which we received when we bought the book). I suppose that's how it's always done, but I'd never been to a book signing before. We had gotten a "J" ticket, but a woman sitting in front of us before the reading started gave us her "D" ticket because she could stand in line with her friend, who had a "B". So that was nice! Otherwise, we'd probably still be there! The line moved very slowly, because he personalized each autograph, and chatted with each person a bit, which was great. I told Nikki she could have the book, since it was her idea to come, so she now has a personalized copy - it says "To Nikki - I respect your ancestors" - David Sedaris. Not quite sure what that means, but still. An extremely enjoyable afternoon.

 

Then we went to REI (also in Southside Works) and bought this, because we discovered after the downpour on Memorial Day that our old Eureka tent's floor is now pervious - not a good thing. They let me set it up completely in the store, so I could see how it went together and if the size would work. So we're officially a 2-person-tent family [couple] - the kids will have to buy their own gear now.  :-)

For the long holiday weekend, we decided (after much internet searching) to go to Mohican State Forest (near Mansfield, OH), since it was the closest thing to where Nikki is, and we thought just in case it was too crowded we wanted to be able to fall back to staying at "her" camp.

 

Here's my annotated version of the "trail" map provided by the Ohio DNR. We registered at the Forest Office for site #10, but after backpacking for about 3 miles, we never found it, but we did find #8, so we set up camp there.

We were hoping to find a spot near a stream for some water, but what I hadn't realized was that all the winding the trail did was because it was on a ridge, so any stream beds we crossed were dry at that elevation. After we set up camp, we each went out to try to scout out some water, but we all came back empty. I did find a little stream that I thought I could get at least some water from, but when I looked up, I saw it came right out of a cow pasture. We had water purification stuff with us of course, but no sense tempting fate that much! We ended up buying a couple of gallon jugs of water Saturday night when we hiked out to go to the hockey game. I guess we're too used to the places we camp in PA, where there's always plenty of water available to treat and boil.

Pretty flowers around the campsite:

 

 

Dinner Saturday was ramen noodles with lemon-dill salmon (from a vacuum pack), with garlic crackers and provolone on top. Then we hiked back to the car and drove to a bar to watch the Pens get blown out by Detroit. Boo!

 

 

 

 

 

 

Some camp scenes (pretty typical of our trips):

 

Sunday hike down to the river:

 

 

Sunday dinner was our favorite camping standby... foil dinner. This one featured small new potatoes, asparagus from the garden, onion, and prosciutto. Was supposed to include green beans and carrots, but I sort of forgot them at home, heh. Oh, and homemade SanGiovese vino in the Sierra cup there.