Quote Originally Posted by dragonrider
I hate to drop out now that we are getting into the "you made it personal," "No YOU made it personal" portion of our debate, but I've got a camping trip to get to. See you all next week!
Quote Originally Posted by maladroit
where are ya going camping? car camping or back country camping?
Quote Originally Posted by daihashi
sort've related.. I've only been camping once in my life and never gone again. I got lice that one time I went camping. I think I was about 12 years old. I'm sure I got it from another kid that was there.. but still; it left a bad taste in my mouth.


I do however like to go out to the lake and fish and cook out on an open fire.. RAWR!
Quote Originally Posted by maladroit
after years of being trapped inside, my kids finally got old enough to sleep in a tent in a campground a few years ago...the first few trips were nightmares, but we kept at it until they got used to it and now camping trips are the highlight of their summers...we bought a 10 man tent at costo for $250...it's a piece of crap, but it's big enough to stand up in, and there's enough room for two queen sized air mattresses and all the backpacks/boots/clothes

cooking outdoors over the open fire, smoking pot, and drinking beer in the rainforest is AWESOME! it's too farking cold and wet now though, so i'm going to kallyfornia to throw some money at the US economy...i hope they still have beer and pot down there
It was just a short 2-night trip to a local CA state park, Mount Diablo State Park. It's a car camping site, but the idea was for everyone to take only the gear and food that we would use on a 2-night backpacking trip. One person on the trip wants to go backpacking but does not have a lot of experience, so she needed to do a gear shakedown trip to see if she has what she needs and can actually carry it all. I am not convinced. I think she has too much stuff to carry and not all of it the right thing that she actually needs. Also having the car there with a few things in it that were not in the pack, meant we could cheat a bit --- "I woulldn't carry all these axtra shirts, but since it's cold and it's in the car, I'll just put it on for now."

I just recently got back into backpacking after not having done it for about 10 years, and it took me a few short overnighters to remember how to trim down the load to the essentials. Now I think I have my gear worked out pretty well, and I am going again next week with a different group on a short Sierra overnighter. This other freind of mine needs to do some of these real reality-check overnighters to really test things out. She keeps wanting to plan a week-long backpacking trip without having even doen a real overnighter in which she carries her real gear kit! I'm not getting roped into anything like that!

I actually kickstarted my interest in backpacking again after participating in a few backpacking threads on this site. That got me thinking about it and how much I missed it, and then I met up with a few people who invited me on some of their trips.

Anyway, aside from the bogus nature of the gear shakedown, it was a very fun trip. The people are easygoing and fun. We had plenty of weed and booze. Weather was very nice. The terrain is steep and mostly scrub, small pine trees, and oak. We had a site with some shade, which was great. Mount Diablo is the most prominent mountain for miles around, so you have some GREAT views. The downside is that being on the mountain means any hike you do is steep.

One of the cool things we did was to watch a group of hanggliders take off. it was a group of 4. They would take off one at a time, and then circle in the thermal updrafts on the side of the mountain and pick up more and more altitude. I was listening to them talk before they took off and they were planning to go to a landmark that I think was probably about 40 miles away. But they had closer places where they could land as well. So they were going to go to each one in sequence, like stepping stones, check altitude and if they had enough altitude, they would go to the next one. It was cool to hear them planning the whole thing out.

The one hassle we had is that place is infested with raccoons. They started coming out in the afternoon, and kept coming back all night long. so you really had to be aware af putting things away. They stole a small stuff sack with a few snacks in it, and while we were lookig through the brush for that, we found all of these things that had been stolen from other campers in the past. I found a small sleeping bag in a stuff sack and we found a few garments as well. Daihashi, you mentioned lice, and that cracked me up because we were wondering what to do with the crap we found in the bushes, and someone said there was no way they would keep any of it because it was probably infested with lice.

Al right, enough about my camping trip! How about that debate?