Category Archives: Backpacking

What To Do If You Encounter A Mountain Lion While Hiking?

Backpacking, Camping
From Wikipedia — This image is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license. Attribution: NaturesFan1226

There are a few questions people, who don’t backpack, often ask me. For one, most ask, “How many miles did you hike?” In a way, this is kind of amusing to me as I wrote in How many miles did you hike? To be fair to those who ask the question, it is a part of our nature and intelligence to quantify things around us — something that separates us from all other creatures on the planet.

The other question I get is, “What about mountain lions?” Then a series of “what-if kind of questions.” Often bears or rattlesnakes are substituted for mountain lions.

So let’s examine what one should do if they encounter a mountain lion on a backpacking trip or even a day hike.

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Campground Etiquette for Families: Teaching Kids Respect for Nature and Fellow Campers

Backpacking, Camping, , , , ,
Teaching kids the joys of camping includes teaching respect—for nature, wildlife, and fellow campers.

Yesterday I shared a post, Campground Etiquette: We need to talk about trash. One of the main points I wanted to make is so many of today’s campers just haven’t been educated on the rules and regulations, nor taught proper campground etiquette. 

In this post I’ll cover campground etiquette with a focus on teaching kids to respect nature and their fellow campers.

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Adventure before Dementia

Backpacking, Camping, General Talk, Senior Moments

Senior Moments 

Well, maybe not senior moments. We try to avoid senior moments. Seems many seniors are just waiting to die, we’re out living.

We just returned from a couple of weeks of camping in the desert. It was a totally relaxing. I didn’t take any pics, so you’ll just have to use your imagination and picture the amazing scenery and wildlife we saw, like a whole herd of majestic big horn sheep.

But here’s something that caught my eye: I saw this really interesting spare wheel cover on a travel trailer that said ‘Adventure Before Dementia.’ The phrase sounds pretty catchy, and it also made me think about our own lives. It’s all about perspective, you know? What it means to you can totally change depending on how you look at things.

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In Defense of Freedom (Units) part 1

Backpacking, Camping, What's Up With That?, ,

What’s Up With That?

My friend Paul recently shared a series of articles about his camping and backpacking trip to Big Bend National Park. In Part 2, he recommended a Driving Guide for visitors to the park. (by the way, I recommend you read Part 1 and Part 3 of Paul and Joan’s recent adventures in Texas).

He said, “If you decide to drive the backroads of Big Bend, we found the $7 backcountry road guide a great purchase. You can get it online or at the visitor centers. It has mile-by-mile descriptions (sorry to those in the civilized world, it only lists Freedom Units TM), a brief description of the routes, and even some history.” <bold is mine>

I was curious about the term “Freedom Units.” I’m not really into slang words or phrases, and I don’t know much about current urban dictionaries. So, I did a quick search online, and I found out that Freedom Units is a joke about the Americanized Imperial measurement system that the United States uses.

Guess what? Only three countries in the whole world officially use the Imperial System: the United States, Liberia, and Myanmar (also known as Burma). The rest of the world uses the metric system. I don’t mean to knock Liberia or Myanmar, but they don’t come to mind as places that are at the forefront of scientific research. The United States is.

Also, I found out that every country in the world, except these three, has laws that require people to use the metric system.

So, what’s the deal? Is the metric system some kind of communist plot? Is there a good reason why the United States should keep using the Imperial System? Let’s take a closer look at this topic.

Continue reading In Defense of Freedom (Units) part 1 →