Why I went into the woods

When we were back in Utah, JP and I had bought backpacking equipment to start what we hope will be a lifetime of backpacking. We decided to do a small check-out trip at Monkey Bell park this weekend to test out our gear and more importantly our performance. We took off directly after school and work to drive to the park. The park has an 11 mile parameter loop trail which can actually be done as two separate loops of about 6 to 7 miles each by using a bypass trail thru the lakes area. The parameter loop has three back country shelters (much like yurts in Europe, so you don't necessarily need to bring a tent, although without a screen for the bugs it seems like you would get bitten to death.) We stayed at the Hall Springs shelter, which is about 3 miles in on the trail, which gave us enough time to hike in before dark and get our camp set up. The weather has cooled slightly, making the evening bearable outside, even if the hiking is still quite sweaty.



Great Beginnings. Everything feels light when you first put it on. But even after 7 miles, I would say that my new pack definitely felt way better than what I remember of my old pack experience as a Scout. The modern internal frame back can be extremely well adjusted to sit right on the hips and then compact it to stay firmly on the back. We had to play with JP's pack several times, but I think we finally got it pretty dialed in.







Some sights along the trail.



Our shelter in the woods



Setting up camp. We put up our tent, minus the rainfly.





There was a nice spring near the shelter. We had borrowed a water filter and pumped several liters of water to refill our water bottles from it. We definitely need to get one of these, as they are way lighter than taking liters and liters of water and in Tennessee it is not hard to find a water source that just needs to be filtered.



JP tending the fire. The night started cooling off a bit, the fire was only for comfort, not warmth or cooking. We did take pleasure in how well we got it going using only our hot spark, a bit of lint, and gathered fire wood. I was really pleased with the hot sparks tool as it removes the need for matches that could get wet and lint is very light weight and lights beautifully. For our cook stove we brought our new butane stove. This worked very well. We simply boiled water and added it to our Mountain House beef stew packets (freeze dried and light). This seemed to work very well. Obviously since we were only going one night, we could have brought anything we wanted, but we wanted to get experience with what we might use for long trips. For all you more experienced backpackers out there, what do you like to take?

I spent some time trying to get a cellphone signal to find out if Michael Phelps had been able to win the 100 m fly. We didn't find out until Saturday afternoon. After letting our fire die out we went to bed. We were once again reminded of how deafeningly loud a Tennessee night is. Some day I will get someone to identify to me all the bugs and their personal sounds. Our semi-self-inflating sleeping pads worked well, although sleeping on a flat wooden platform probably wasn't that much of a test. Our tent is relatively large (and JP relatively small) so it wasn't as cramped as I thought it might be.



JP chopping wood. This is how we prepared firewood :-)







More sights along the way out. We felt pretty good, although a bit tired and our feet definitely hurt. Looks like we need to get some good hiking boots to take the additional strain of pack weight. We weighed our fully packed packs when we got home and mine was 23 pounds and JP's 18. I suspect that for a long trip the normal weight will be closer to 30 or 40, so we probably need to get stronger.

Tap Dancing

Last year, JA's ballet dance teacher left the public city programs to start her own dance studio. At that time, we couldn't afford the increased cost to keep JA in her class and JA had become less enthusiastic about doing ballet. This year, she decided she wanted to learn tap dancing, so she started in the basic beginner class. Here is a video of what she has learned so far.

Visit from UNA bee-ers

Last week our friends from UNA, who have added beekeeping to their long list of other hobbies, stayed overnight so they could attend the temple and go to GG's 7th birthday party. SI remains the last of our friends and family to be All But Dissertation, as NG, TD, and BB have all managed at long last to cross the finish line after leaving their graduate study university ABD and taking teaching jobs while finishing. SI is in the final editing stages and CI has sworn he can't train for another marathon or bike race until he finishes, so hopefully that will give him enough incentive to get it done.

JA drawings

JA has really taken a knack to drawing cartoon pets. I thought I would post a few of her pictures for you to see.