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- Apr 1, 2009
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Last weekend my son and I did an overnight at an obscure, remote and awesome area right on a lake in Harriman State Park, NY to celebrate Son of Beanbag's 12th birthday, which is actually this coming Saturday.
At around 2:30 p.m., we put on our loaded (actually overloaded) backpacks, and started out on a 1.5 hour hike up some pretty tough trails.
We saw three snakes along the way. This little guy was kind enough to pose for some pics:
We crossed a tributary just before we got to the lake:
Since we had never been to this area before, we didn't know exactly were we were going to make camp, but when we got our first glimpse of the lake, we had a pretty good feeling that an excellent campsite would be found.
When we got here, we knew we had arrived:
First things first, we set up our tent and collected firewood.
The spot was perfect. It was a large area of flat rock about 30' above the lake with a fire pit left by previous campers, some comfortable rocks to sit on, easy lake access and a flat mossy area about 20 yards into the woods to pitch our tent.
We were hungry, but not yet ready to start the fire because we had plenty of daylight left, so we broke out the MSR Pocket Rocket and made some food:
We then did some fire prep which included using the fulcrum method to break down some of the bigger pieces (I learned about this from Southern "pics or it didn't happen" Cross):
Just for the hell of it, batoning:
Feathering:
After all that we were ready to take a swim and do some fishing. We skinny dipped- I will spare you the pics Son covertly took of me and, for fear of having someone report me to child protective services, the ones I took of him. The fishing was fun, but we didn't catch anything because I stink at fishing.
Once night fell we lit the camp fire:
I made a pot hook and we boiled some water for hot cocoa.
Son of Beanbag made his specialty- melted chocolate on graham crackers:
The moon was practically full, and we took some time lapse photos by setting the camera on a rock and hitting the self-timer so as not to shake it.
This is a 15 sec. exposure:
The next two are 60 second exposures:
We finally went to bed. The next morning this was our sunrise wake up view:
After breakfast Son did some firesteel practice, we broke camp and headed on back:
We saw this little guy and Son took a great picture:
When we were almost back to the car we were pretty tired, Son took a tumble and decided to just take a little nap right there:
Personally, I can't think of a better way to celebrate a birthday (yes there will be a party), and we've decided from here on out to make it an annual tradition.
Thanks for looking.
BEAN
At around 2:30 p.m., we put on our loaded (actually overloaded) backpacks, and started out on a 1.5 hour hike up some pretty tough trails.
We saw three snakes along the way. This little guy was kind enough to pose for some pics:
We crossed a tributary just before we got to the lake:
Since we had never been to this area before, we didn't know exactly were we were going to make camp, but when we got our first glimpse of the lake, we had a pretty good feeling that an excellent campsite would be found.
When we got here, we knew we had arrived:
First things first, we set up our tent and collected firewood.
The spot was perfect. It was a large area of flat rock about 30' above the lake with a fire pit left by previous campers, some comfortable rocks to sit on, easy lake access and a flat mossy area about 20 yards into the woods to pitch our tent.
We were hungry, but not yet ready to start the fire because we had plenty of daylight left, so we broke out the MSR Pocket Rocket and made some food:
We then did some fire prep which included using the fulcrum method to break down some of the bigger pieces (I learned about this from Southern "pics or it didn't happen" Cross):
Just for the hell of it, batoning:
Feathering:
After all that we were ready to take a swim and do some fishing. We skinny dipped- I will spare you the pics Son covertly took of me and, for fear of having someone report me to child protective services, the ones I took of him. The fishing was fun, but we didn't catch anything because I stink at fishing.
Once night fell we lit the camp fire:
I made a pot hook and we boiled some water for hot cocoa.
Son of Beanbag made his specialty- melted chocolate on graham crackers:
The moon was practically full, and we took some time lapse photos by setting the camera on a rock and hitting the self-timer so as not to shake it.
This is a 15 sec. exposure:
The next two are 60 second exposures:
We finally went to bed. The next morning this was our sunrise wake up view:
After breakfast Son did some firesteel practice, we broke camp and headed on back:
We saw this little guy and Son took a great picture:
When we were almost back to the car we were pretty tired, Son took a tumble and decided to just take a little nap right there:
Personally, I can't think of a better way to celebrate a birthday (yes there will be a party), and we've decided from here on out to make it an annual tradition.
Thanks for looking.
BEAN
)
