I just came back from a great weekend camping with Brenda and Radar at #CroftStatePark in the SouthCarolina up-state. Brenda rode with friends and I took Radar on his first ever, real trail hike! We covered about 11 miles in one day with 8.5 of it along the Croft Passage of the Palmetto Trail. While he and I have gone for walks before, this was Radar’s first real hiking on a trail in the woods venture, and he did really really well, he’s such a good boy!
Category: Life Page 5 of 6
According to the Denver Post, Pikes Peak picked up some snow this weekend and commented as a fitting indication of the start of the changing seasons.
Last year I hiked to the peak of this amazing mountain with my family and absolutely loved it (now I’ve been able to catch my breath – at the time I think I probably just liked it). I loved hiking this mountain and would hike it again and again if I could.
The new piece from the Denver Post was one of those blips which shows up in your news feed. It reminded me how thank full I was then and am now. So many thing can change in a persons life over a year, I think it’s important to recognize the good things which happen and the good people which happen to you.
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If you want milk on your next travel trip, try taking a shelf-life or shelf-stable type produce. I’ve froze half pints of Parmalat milk which comes packaged like juice box drinks. This type of milk package, unopened, has a long un-refrigerated shelf life and is good for camping and backup food supplies where weight isn’t an issue. Because it is real milk, it tastes better than powered and the kids like it. Freezing the milk conserves on ice. I did this on a canoe trip and 24 hours after leaving home it was still ice cold and partially frozen.
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When you first get one of those epic, crazy, fun, adventure ideas in your head, your thoughts may shift to all the problems you think you will face. This can be overwhelming and likely may cause you to look elsewhere for something easier to do.
I recently read a management tip-of-the-day which struck me as appropriate to adventure goal seeking (or any other goal seeking for that matter).
First start by considering your goal (say, “I want climb Pike Peak”). Then list the obstacles you expect to face along the way (“Lack of air at high altitude”). Listing the goal helps you focus on the objective. Listing out the problems in getting to the goal helps takes them from the enormity in your imagination and makes them simple word problem statements, each to be addressed. Yes, there are obstacles, but they are typically finite and each problem can be worked.
Next, frame what you will do about these obstacles as “if”-“then” statements. Look at the “If” statement first. If this is a problem – what are some solutions, workarounds, or fixes? The you can use these solution towards your “Then” statement(s). To address the lack of O2 at high elevations, for example, you could tell yourself: “If there is a lack of available oxygen at 14k feet, what are some solutions to overcoming this issue? I can train to compensate?, can I carry extra O2?, etc.”
Then you can build your “Then” solutions. “If there is low O2, Then I will use hypoxic training, Then I will develop an altitude acclimation plan, Then I will carry portable oxygen canisters, Then I will have a exit plan for altitude sickness.”
By using if-then statements, you can think through what will get in your way and make a plans to address or overcome them and reach your epic crazy fun adventure goals!
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Freeze gallon size water jugs and all freeze-able items. This saves on ice and helps keep things colder longer. A gallon of frozen water was used for the (instant) lemonade the first night and ice water was passed around on the home stretch as a refreshing treat.
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I’m sitting here waiting for the barbershop to open (it’s that time of the month again) and reading news feeds. Lots of crazy stupid stuff.
A stag with a headdress full of fishing gear, ww2 Nazi fog are just a couple. There is so much news and information available to us now a person could easily be overwhelmed by the magnitude of things wrong in the world. But every day, we each have the opportunity, to make our world, where we live, where our loved ones live, just a little bit better. Don’t waste your opportunity.
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… Today is “Ditch Day” While I’m sure everyone wants to be inside at the office this Friday for the full 8 hours, some folks have the crazy idea getting outside is good for you!
Akin to REI’s #OptOutside, #DitchDay is Kelty’s version of having some fun and encouraging folks to just simply get out more and have some fun today. If you don’t ditch work today, I’m sure the boss will understand (comment if for some reason your boss bailed on today!), but be sure to take a few extra moments for yourself, outside of course. Eat lunch on the patio, take an extra lap around the park, enjoy yourself, even for just a bit.
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So, this is Radar. He’s a Blue Heeler and is just over a year old now. We came across each other a couple months ago. Sometimes in the course of normal events, your life changes. For both Radar and I, this is one of those times.
I had been considering a dog for a while now for a number of reasons. Maybe part trail buddy, part body guard, part wing-man, who knows. A few years ago, I had once hiked a 20 mile piece of mountain trail with a group. One of the hikers had a great trail dog with him. This trail buddy would constantly run up and down the group starting in the front and working toward the back, checking on every hiker in the group. For twenty miles. He was never more than 20 feet off trail and never more than a few hundred yards from his master. Quite honestly, I felt like I needed that kind of a buddy now from somewhere deep down inside me. But I didn’t really have any particular breed or clear concept in mind. It’s funny how these things work out sometimes.
I had shared some of my idea for a four legged companion with a friend of mine, Brenda, and the hunt began. She had done some checking and offered to go with me to go to a friend of hers “just to look” at one. Her friend boards dogs in the area and happened to have a young heeler someone had dropped off. Radar had been with her for a month or so while she was trying to find him a home. For Radar, he seemed to have had a rocky start. He had been given up or returned several times in his just short first year of life. I think he would fall pretty cleanly in to the “rescue dog” category. Rejected, abandoned, and unwanted, he waited. Even in a pack of dogs he stood out to me. I really couldn’t tell you why, maybe it was his story, maybe it was mine. But that day, I left with him on a borrowed lead and a commitment in my heart to try my best to be a good companion for him.
It’s been about four months now since our paths crossed. We’re still working out a couple small differences (he likes to get up early, I like to sleep in a bit), and learning about each other (he loves to chase a ball or toy, but really doesn’t float well). I work with him and he teaches me what he knows. My life has changed again, and so has his. Both for the better.
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The week is about over and I’m heading camping this weekend with a bunch of new campers. This weekend should be fun as I really enjoy introducing new campers to the outdoors. With spring just around the corner, I am looking forward to the weather starting to break and the green to start popping. I so wanting to get out on a trail soon. So much of “normal” life gets in the way of that however (heavy sigh). I really need fix that, but for now, it’s the new campers campout which will help take the edge off “civilized” life.
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Following our lunch under the pines, we continue towards Poinsett State Park and the end of our hike. I know we’re near the the end now, there is a public parking lot ahead for staging mountain bikes and horses, our hiking trail passes through it on the way to the state park. However as we emerge from under the tall pines, about a half mile from this parking lot, we are presented a view which is hard to describe. The hills rising up in front of us are raw, striped bare of all living things. I am a little surprised at the completeness of the destruction. We hike up from the creek bed to the top of the hill and look around. Hundreds of acres of nature, wiped away. There are no bushes. There is no grass. There is no wildlife. There are no more trails. The only things remaining, are charred broken sticks where a forest once was. Even the tree stumps are cut so close to the ground as to be nonexistent. The caretakers of the land have sold off their charge to the highest bidder. This saddens me greatly. I look around for a sign of our trail, out of habit I guess, only to realize following a trail here doesn’t really matter any more. We strike out across the wasteland to get to the road crossing as quickly as we can. We pick up the trail and crossing over in to the state park side of the hike, I am relieved to find one of my favorite parts of this hike still intact, the little forest of scrub oaks draped with Spanish moss. But as I look back sadly, with a heavy heart, at the desolate, charred, waste behind me, I wonder … who speaks for the trees?
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