Camping

Camping is a whole lot of fun. Nothing beats a toasty campfire on a cold night and breakfast cooked over a fire.


Saturday night brought my Lovely Lady and I out to Greenbrier State Park in Washington County, MD. A convenient 1.5 hours from Baltimore. My good friend Ted was camping Friday and Saturday night and we decided to have a whirlwind one night camp to join them.

Our gear was all gathered and chosen Friday night. Since we have been slowly working on refining our gear choices, and we were bringing our smaller tent (an older Coleman 4 person dome) LL and I decided to forgo our usual Coleman queen-size air mattress to see if our military surplus green foam pads and old Coleman sleeping bags would be comfortable enough for a one nighter.


Our choice of sleeping materials consisted of a stacked layer of:

1. Green military surplus 1/2" foam mats
2. Folded wool blankets
3. Coleman sleeping bags (generic older)
4. a few sheets and a light quilt in case it was too cold.

We also each had an IKEA GOSA HASSEL pillow. These pillows are bulky because they are filled with chunks of memory foam, but compress down tightly in an air tight bag. We used a large sized spacebag and, though it was tough to get both pillows in, just kneeling on it compressed them both down to about 3 inches thick. Using the vacuum at home got them even smaller.

The sleeping bags were warm, but the padding was not enough for LL. She woke up with major hip pain. I am still too big to zip the sleeping bag all the way and that made for a slightly chilly night for me, though my feet stayed toasty. The bags are also too short for both of us.

Actual camping sleeping pads and bags are definitely high on the list of gear replacements.

We also were trying out a few other new pieces of gear:

• A Coleman BlackCat catalytic propane tent heater
• A Harbor Freight magnesium block and fire steel
• Vaseline soaked cotton balls as fire starters
• Five Gallon Bucket lid seats.
• Coleman Head Lamp

I will post reviews of each of those items soon.

Greenbrier was a nice campground. I got to experience a few new things there that I haven't seen at previous sites.

They had a code accessed campground. When you checked in, they gave you a code to punch in on a parking lot style gate to access the camp loops and to enter and leave the park after hours. It made me feel a bit more secure about leaving gear around on future trips, though the technology seemed a tiny bit out of place.

They had leveled crushed gravel tent sites. I was leery at first until I got our tent  and footprint tarp laid out. It was actually pretty nice. It held our tent stakes securely too.

Lastly, our fire ring was set on a 2-3 foot high  concrete pillar. I have always previously seen rings on the ground. My friend Ted's site, where we spent most of our time, was more traditionally placed.

We are planning a late season trip to Shenandoah, so look forward to more reviews and maybe some videos this time!

!fat