Hiking and Camping

Some Camps/Hikes I Have Been a Part of

Links on the left lead to descriptions and photos from each hike. Enjoy!

The Obligatory Equipment List

Everyone who hikes much at all has an opinion on the equipment they use. Here is my equipment list.

Background

Where the Hiking Came From

I hiked when I was a teenager and liked it. I still like it.

Why Camp/Hike as an (Somewhat) Older Guy

Now that I have money and stability of job, I find I am lacking a bit of adventure. I used to handle that through gut-wrenching career changes, but now my glorious wife Lisa has put such behavior to an end. Adventure beckons, though.

I had collected a bit of equipment over the years, figuring that I would go backpacking with my kids at some point, but I was not getting to it. We are essentially couch potatoes and it was just easier to lay there than to get out and hike.

Then, there came girls camp.

Other people had always handled Girls Camp and no one had ever really asked me if I wanted to go. Those people got tired or moved, so I took over the position, in Shayna's second year. I got frisky and decided to plan a massive backpacking adventure, ending up at the camp the girls use. It was a fiasco that is recorded in this folder for the ages, including what I learned.

Then, the kids wanted to go to Disney World.

A few years later, Lisa brought up the Disney World idea. Years of suffering and saving could net us thousands and thousands of dollars, all to be spent in two weeks in the distant future on stuff I would likely need therapy to recover from. It sounded like the great fun I had been missing all this time! Not! I was less than enthusiastic.

Then, Jay used his rusty math skills.

I figured that I could buy a lot of backpacking equipment for something much less than thousands and thousands of dollars and we could spend time together (that is the point of vacationing, right?) wearing out this equipment over the course of some years, starting like next week. We didn't have to put off the fun to the next decade!

Lisa was dubious. It was important to start the propaganda with the kids and act like this would be a democratic decision. I found it laughably easy to sucker the kids into thinking hiking was great fun and they mentioned to their mother, with precious little prodding from me, that going to the mountains would be better than puking our guts out and sweating to death in central Florida.

Then, Lisa decided she wanted to go camping, too.

So far, it seems, so good. You can see for yourself from the reports included here. Soon, you too will con your family into blisters, bears, and the happy torture of camping! Thank me now before you get yourself killed!