You Roll With The Punch

Watchful

Watchful

Joined
Dec 8, 2004
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When I was formally introduced to this topic, I was told "Survival mode begins the instant anything goes differently from what you planned for." It's a phrase that sticks with me, and I kept thinking it this weekend.

We intended to load up the car this weekend, drive to the New Buffalo, MI, area, and stay at a cottage (among a group of cottages in the woods) basically sleeping, reading, grabbing a burger at Redamak's, and hiking the dunes. The boys were especially looking forward to this trip.

Then, literally as we arrived, the area got hit with a microburst (or perhaps a macroburst given what we saw). Trees were down everywhere, power lines snakes across roadways, and everything was pasted under leaves. Little sticks and twigs were sticking upright in the ground, indicating the violence with which they were hurled down. Quite impressive.

Power as out all over the area; one of the cottages was crushed by a tree (the folks inside were unharmed, but the view was spectacular).

To the astonishment of the proprietors, no one checked out. We all stayed (even the folks in the smashed cottage asked to stay, even though for safety reasons you obviously couldn't; they were sad to leave).

We cleaned up the area Saturday and had a massive bonfire. Folks used their fireplaces and little grills to cook. Since I planned to get in some star gazing, I brought flashlights and a lantern--these became the family's sources of light. I planned to cook the family a dinner outdoors anyway, so I made steaks, and showed folks how to make baked beans and instant mashed potatoes over an open fire using aluminum foil and kitchen pots to heat and boil water. One of the other guests realized she could make coffee that way, and by adopting my trick she evidently got her entire life back. Smores are easy when you use a chocolate chip cookie as a pie bottom and melt the marshmallow and chocolate over it.

So what changed for us? Well, there was no reason to skip the hike, right? No power, no problem. And Redamak's re-opened this morning, so my older boy luckily got his cheeseburger on the way home and thought it was awesome. We all smell like smoke from the bonfire. And we got it all done: just not in the order we planned.

The area is still largely without power, and folks are going crazy with that. Us? We vacationed there. Kids had a great time, and my wife wound up cooking nothing the entire weekend.
 
Sounds like a plan Watchful. People love to have security blankets, electricity being one of the major ones. Aside from air conditioning and internet porn, life can actually be tolerable without the stuff. Glad you made the most out of the situation and it sounds like there was some good grub to be had!
 
It's funny. My family is always excited after the power goes out. We do things quite differently and more intimate interaction happens.
Glad you made the most of your trip.
 
mymindisamob said:
It's funny. My family is always excited after the power goes out. We do things quite differently and more intimate interaction happens.
Glad you made the most of your trip.
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Thats the way I am when the power goes out. I just love it, and always use my fenix l1d for the lantern is our vaulted, 2 story living room. It keeps it as bright as a reguler light.
 
Improvise, adapt, overcome, its that easy....

"camping" for most is usually far from what most of us think of it as. Last time I was camping with my brother we cooked everything by the fire and even had a free meal via the fish we caught. We were in a camp ground and I think the people across from us thought we were starving because of how we did things. We were cooking steaks, potatos, and beans when one of the guys came over and asked if we wanted to join them for dinner. I thanked him for the offer but showed him the feast over the fire we were about to enjoy and with a puzzeled look went back to his camper.

I think he may have thought we were a little strange for the primitive type of ways we used but in turn we got a good laugh watching them, start a fire with whole logs and gas, take two hours to set up 2 tents, and cook on the stove in their camper.

For some if you take all the luxury away they don't last a day, for others it the luxury we are trying to get away from.
 
All's well that ends well. I'm glad you were able to salvage your get-away. I'm REALLY glad that you got your Redamak's fix... those burgers are the bomb.

Jeff
 
ChapmanPreferred said:
Glad you and the family were all okay.
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jds1 said:
All's well that ends well. I'm glad you were able to salvage your get-away. I'm REALLY glad that you got your Redamak's fix... those burgers are the bomb.
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Thanks guys. I never suspected we were in harm's way, or believe me, I'd have done things differently. I felt bad of course for all the people across the area and Northern Indiana who were days without power. Prepared or not, you lose your sump pump and hundreds of bucks worth of food. That's bad.

And the Redamak's burgers were pretty good. :thumbup: I respect vegetarians. I just don't know how they do it.

knifenut1013 said:
For some if you take all the luxury away they don't last a day, for others it the luxury we are trying to get away from.
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True. The best part is that for people like us, it shouldn't make any difference. I like luxury: I know exactly what to do with it. But every so often, it's nice to remind myself that I don't need it. And it is that easy, exactly as you said.
 
I've mentioned this before but I think it goes here, regarding making do with what's at hand after plans alter.

When I was a kid (13 or so) I went on a couple of week-long canoe trips in Maine (Alagash and St John rivers).

On one of the trips, the guys running the show forgot one of the duffel bags containing all the cooking and eating utensils and the toilet paper(!). It wasn't discovered until the drop-off ride had left, so the guy who forgot the duffel was sent into the nearest town (a 20 mile hitchhike each way -- he caught a ride with a logging truck) to get a skillet and some toilet paper.

In the mean time, the rest of us sawed plates from a log and I found a tin can that we flattened out and attached to a stick to serve as a spatula (that spatula and the skillet were our only cooking utensils for the entire trip). After some discussion among the kids we decided that anything you can eat with a fork you can eat with a spoon, so we all whittled ourselves spoons. We used roundish rocks to smooth out the spoons, which made them a lot more pleasant to use.

We couldn't have had more fun if they'd done it on purpose. I've since sometimes wondered if it wasn't a set-up, but if it was, they probably would have 'remembered' the skillet.
 
Very much inspiring story and nice to hear that you and your family had a great time mostly as planned.
One thing particularly interesting to me is that other guest watching your improvised cooking
also went for another improvisation.
Thanks for sharing!
 
Thanks Fujita Yuji!

I suspect you of all people would have been happy to vacation there, and wonder what the big deal was. I seem to recall you have vacationed in places with no heat in the dead of winter, regardless of electricity!

Ultimately, my only regret was that it was difficult to find places to charge our cell phones; I shut mine off to save power, and my wife used hers as needed (mostly to let relatives know we were completely okay and even loving it)...in the event her phone's battery failed, we would then turn mine on. Her phone worked the whole weekend on a partial charge.

In the end, that was the only thing I worried about was being stranded somewhere and having both phones dead.

Note: the charger in the car had failed. But I had a backup battery, which helped, and we found a restaurant that allowed us to charge hers up.
 
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