A Weekend with the Conway River, pt 3

Sunday, 05 April 2009

I slept like crap Saturday night. I dragged my arse out of bed at about seven-thirty. Coffee and camp slop. Mountain Dew (Electric Hillbilly Piss). In short order I was bright eyed and bushy tailed. Amazing how brisk air right off the bat along with massive doses of caffeine will utterly eradicate the effects of a bad night's sleep.

As I broke down my tent and gear I discovered my camera. It was in the foot of my sleeping bag. Who the hell knows how it got there? The only thing I could figure is that I must have bent over in the tent to pick something up and the camera fell out onto the sleeping bag. I must have then inadvertantly kicked it into the foot of the sleeping bag.

We had only two cigarettes left and those were gone in short order. So after breaking camp we headed out. At the entrance to the RWMA, we pulled over and Earl turned on his cell phone. Beep! Beep! Blip, beep!

Civilization had officially reestablished its noose on our necks.

<HAL>"Dave, you were away, Dave. Where did you go? I missed you. You should never leave me like that, Dave."</HAL>

Can I get a what, what from my sci-fi nerds? In the house with a 2001, A Space Odyssey reference! Oh yeah, and toss in an HTML reference for good measure. Dork-tastic!

We went for the first store we saw, needing nicotine by this point. Wolftown Mercantile Country Store to the rescue! It seemed like a cool little Mom and Pop operation. There was a large iron firestove in the middle of the room around which tables were situated. Some old men were at the tables drinking coffee, eating biscuits (they smelled delicious!), and playing cards.

There was a variety of ammunition under the glass of the counter - 12, 20, and 410 gague shot and slugs, 22 ammo, some 7.62 and .308. There was more, but that was all I got a chance to read. A variety of hunting and fishing gear adorned the shelves alongside normal convenience store fare. The door outside had a placard proclaiming this establishment as a Game Check Station. Cool. A great resource for future trips.

The lady that walked up behind the counter was kind of uncool, though. She either had a permanent sneer affixed to her face or she was doing a terrible job concealing her contempt for Earl and me.

I guess we didn't exactly look like the locals, but damn! I'm a Virginia native from Barboursville - not exactly a metropolis. Didn't she read my Hillbilly Haiku? Sure, I live in Charlottesville now. Yeah, it's a college town and, yes, I work for the University. But it's not like I'm a Professor of Gay and Bisexual Studies or even a professor, for that matter!

Maybe she was just having a bad day...

A Weekend with the Conway River, pt 2

Saturday, 04 April 2009

I woke that morning at around nine o'clock to a very chilly 40 degrees. I got up, got dressed, and got motivated in short order. First thing was first - the GigaStove kicked out some boiling water quickly and coffee was set to brewing in my french press.

Next up was my patented "camp slop" breakfast. Cook up some sausage links, remove them from the pan, add butter and some whipped eggs, salt, pepper, cheese. I then cut up the links into bite-sized pieces and tossed them back in with the eggs. Cook and scramble them all up together. Voila - camp slop. Breakfast of Champions.

Earl and I ate breakfast and set about getting ready for a day of hiking and trout fishing. Here are some pics:

Earl sets up some bait

Earl and the Conway

Me all ready to go

Back at camp before we left

We spent about six hours or so hiking up and down the Conway River and casting into the few calm pools we could find. It had been raining on and off all week, so the river was up quite a bit. After the trip I looked into the Virginia website for Inland Game and Fisheries and found that we needed to go further up the river to find the trout. As it was, we hiked downstream from our camp.

Oh, well. It was nice to be out in Nature doing some fishing. Very Zen, very calming. We lost a lure and a hook/bobber set to branches and rocks. That's kind of par for the course for a day of fishing, though.

As we hiked along the river, we ran across a campsite that looked abandoned. It had an awesome rock firepit and there was even some cut firewood piled up. We decided to see if the place was still abandoned on our way back and then come back with the car for the firewood. I could easily make kindling from this stuff with my hatchet.

On the way back there was a family setting up for what looked like a picnic. We decided to come back towards dusk and see if they were still there. They were. Oh, well. We returned to our camp and began gathering firewood from the wooded slope just up from our camp.
We found plenty of firewood and even rolled a six foot cedar log down the hill. It was actually pretty dry. We used more cattail to start the fire, but this time used a three phase ignition system - cattail to trioxane bar to camp fuel. Fwoosh! Fire!

Sometime after we got back from our hike-n-fish, I went to grab my camera to snap a photo of something. I looked in my breast pocket, which is where I remembered putting the durned thing last. No dice. I patted myself down and then looked in my rucksack and tackle box. Shit!

I actually got a bit "panicked," thinking of the last place I used it on the hike. I remembered fishing from a large rock and having to cut my line after getting hung up on some rocks in the river. As I redid my line I snapped a photo of the river and put the camera down on the rock. I was almost certain I had picked it back up and placed it in my breast pocket. Crap! Had it fallen out at some point, maybe when I bent over to pick something up?

I gave up looking and decided that, on the way out, we'd have to stop by a few of our fishing spots and try to find it. It was about dinner time.

More brews, more grub, and some campfire hypnosis. We played Texas Hold 'Em since the wind had died down, but it was kinda silly since we didn't have any money or chips to bet with. Earl bet heavy and I always saw his "bet." Why the hell not? We followed that up with some War.

CONTINUED...

Camping Trip!

My brother and I went camping Monday night. We woke up to season's the first wintry precipitation at around 4 am Tuesday morning!

We built a stick wall and then draped an emergency thermal blanket over it. Once we lit the fire, standing where I am in this pic you could feel almost no heat from the fire!

I brought my small tent since it was supposed to be cold. We used an extra rainflap to create a little sheltered spot to the side of the tent for our gear and for a little extra insulation.

The beginnings of my brother's bean cassole.

Preheating the iron pan.

As the evening wore on, we broke into our homebrew IPA.

My brother huddling by the tent. My little propane camp stove is heating my brother's antique iron coffee percolator. It was the perfect size for two cups of coffee and it was the first cup of camp coffee I'd ever had without any grounds in it!

Another Apoca-List

Sometimes my mind starts racing and I have to dump it all to a list if I hope to remember half of it the next day. Last night I was thinking about the pending gridcrash and I realized that I needed a clearer idea of a) what needed to be done ahead of time, and b) what my goals would be after the gridcrash.

I'm the only one in my entire family spending any time preparing. Most people have just learned that this is part of who I am and they humor me when I talk about how close to the edge our unsustainable society is. Well, that's fine. I'll do my best to prepare for my entire family.

To that end, I have divided my Post Apocalypse Task List into two main goals. The first is to improve our farm to make it a useful part of a cooperative. Goal two is to setup and initially lead the aforementioned cooperative.

Really the big idea with our farm is to grow enough veggies to feed ourselves and enough hops and barley to make enough beer to trade and for a little personal consumption, of course. With the law being gone (or utterly unenforceable) we may even branch into some other types of cultivation...

• Pre Apocalypse Tasks
• Top off ammo supplies
• Obtain Barley Seeds (en route) [edit: 01-09-2009]
• Obtain Hop Sprout/Seeds
• Build Hopvine Trellis
• Get Planted
• Increase long shelf life food stocks
• Post Apocalypse Tasks
• Start a Cooperative on Our Road, resources including:
• 2 Vinyards
• Brewing
• Corn Farm
• Horses (Plows? Hauling?)
• Metal Working
• Close to railroad tracks
• Multiple ponds (fish?)
• Our Farm
• Build a Root Cellar
• Rain Collection System
• Build Composting Outhouse [edit: 01-09-2009]
• Gather Firewood (tree down by road)(uses last of chainsaw fuel?)
• Compost Pile
• Start Crops, depending on season
• (Peas, Radish, Onion, Spinach, Cabbage, Swiss Chard, Beet, Carrot, Lettuce, Kentucky Wonder Beans, Corn, Cucumber, Squash Zucchini, Green Pepper, Winter Squash, Tomato, Barley, Hops)
• Water Distiller
• Setup Butcher Shop (for hunting: deer, rabbit, & squirrel are abundant)
• Get Some Dogs
• Beer Brewing Equipment Setup
• Gather Rocks
• Spring Improvements
• Firepits
• Landscaping
• Sources
• "New Driveway" & Back by Alamo (a part of the farm on which we used to play "Alamo")
• Scavenge Electrical Resources From Town
• Solar Panels (be on the lookout for those now)
• Electrical Wiring
• Generators (for use in hydro or wind applications) [edit: 01-09-2009]
• Turbines (for use in hydro or wind applications) [edit: 01-09-2009]

"Camping" Weekend

Saturday morning my brother and I set out on a camping trip. We drove to the Shenandoah National Forest and arrived at the gatehouse at about 9.15 AM. We filed a backcountry camping permit and were on our merry way.

What a perfect day for a hike and camp, too! I'd guess the temperature was in the upper 60's. There was a nice breeze. The trail was mostly empty. We ran into a couple of people but it was pretty easy to get a sense of isolation out there. The trail is a beaten dirt and rock path along various ridges, really. There's no paving or landscaping on this trail.

My brother and I went off the trail at a few points. At times we were going up 70 degree inclines which made it feel more like climbing than hiking . We hiked this way for at least four miles, maybe four and a half or five. Oh yeah - the whole time we were carrying packs that weighed in at 65 lbs.

By one PM we were looking for a campsite. We found a spot off the trail, dug a fire pit, lined it with rocks, gathered and chopped firewood, cleared the site, and then began setting up the tent when tragedy struck. As we were attempting to setup the tent we realized that the poles were way too short. We had the wrong tent poles!

The last time I went camping, my other brother (or maybe my sister) collapsed the tents and packed them away. I'm betting that's when the poles got mixed up. Of the three tents I had the largest two. My brother's tent was smallest by far. Since I brought the middle sized tent with me this weekend and the poles we had were too small, I'm betting my poles are with my brother's tent.

So we were left with three options, as we saw them:

1. Build our own shelter
2. Sleep on the ground
3. Hike back

Option one we dismissed. The method of shelter construction I am most familiar with requires thatching materials and we were on the side of a forested mountain. Gathering enough material to construct a shelter whilst on a slope was not very appealing.

Option two was out since we knew there was a chance for rain that night. Option three is what we chose. But we couldn't leave before we had achieved some sort of victory. We decided that victory would take the form of a fire we'd start and then immediately put out. I mean we had already built a stone-lined fire pit and everything. We got the fire going after two tries (not bad!) and then thoroughly doused it and got on our way.

I can tell you this: what started as a camping trip turned into a Bataan Death March of a hiking trip. I am so out of shape it isn't funny. The way I looked at it was like this: I was carrying a 65 lb pack and about 80 extra pounds of ass. That's me carrying 145 lbs all over the mountain.

At two o'clock we hit the trail again. We stuck to the trail on the way back (after climbing a steep slope for 150 feet to find it again!). Since we had used most of my water to douse the fire we were on the lookout for water on the way back. We found a great little spring full of cold, fresh water bubbling right out of the side of the mountain. Oh, yeah! I cannot think of a time in my life when water was so cold, pure, and refreshing.

After recharging our water stocks we ground on. My right heel was really starting to hurt by the time we tried to pitch camp, so it was less than pleasant to hike the entire way back on a sore foot. I tried not to be too much of a pansy about it.

When we got back I was not mocked by my wife. I have to give her credit on that one. Thanks, hon. She did make a good point, though which made me think a lot. She said, "Maybe the Universe was testing you. Maybe you were supposed to build a shelter and tough it out."

Next time we will not bring a tent at all. The entire point next time will be to camp with the idea that we must construct shelter if we want it. I'll have to see if my brother will be into that. I think he will be.