Category Archives: Camping

Camping in the Southern Sierra: What Day is It?

Camping,

We just got back from a couple of weeks of camping in Sequoia National Forest. The trip was a transverse of summer and fall – that is the first official day of fall occurred in the middle of our trip. Mother Nature ignored the transverse timing. I ignored it too because time; minutes, hours, days, months and years are man-made tick marks. Since I retired these points in time are irrelevant. I get up with the sun and go to bed at night when I become sleepy. I sleep for as many hours as my body demands, which is now at least 8 hours and sometimes 10 hours. No need for alarm clocks or even a clock.

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Buy Your 2nd Camper the 1st Time: What to Look For

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What the title of this post means is to figure out what you want and need in a camper before you purchase your first one, because most people find out that after they purchase that first camper, it doesn’t do what they want it to do. At this point, seeing the deficiencies of that first camper, they buy a second camper that better fits their style of camping.

So I thought I’d share my experiences over the years with 4 different campers, what I now look for in a camper, and how my needs changed over time. Now, I’m not presenting my thoughts as some sort of a subject matter expert. My thoughts are based on semi-quasi science, that can be summed up in this statement, that I read somewhere years ago.

If you learn from your mistakes I must be a genius.

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Joshua Tree Super Bloom

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Just got back from a five-day camping trip that was an orgy of glorious dappled-colored days in Joshua Tree National Park. Balmy days in the 80’s (F) added to a most excellent trip. As I did last week, in the Anza Borrego Super Bloom post, I’ll skip the writing and let the desert speak for itself…

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2016 Recap: Favorite Gear, Blog Stats, Favorite Trips, Blah, Blah, Blah

Backpacking, Backpacking Gear, Camping, Travel Trailer, , ,

Well, it’s that time of the year again when many backpacking bloggers create a list of their favorite new gear from the prior year. How on earth (or why) can these folks have a slew of new backpacking gear year after year? Methinks they are focused on gear, not getting out often and walking. But I digress…

Then some of these bloggers publish web stats for their blog during the prior year. Really? How boring.

A few backpacking bloggers may only post some of their favorite pictures taken during the prior year or do a simple recap of some trip reports – I like what some of the “few” do. The rest, meh.

What is interesting is that campers and full time RVers who blog generally don’t do this. They simply keep writing about their adventures.

My backpacking gear hasn’t changed much in the past 4 or 5 years, so nothing to write about here. Same goes for our camping gear. Somewhere on this website are lists of the gear and equipment we use. You should be able to easily find those if you are interested.

Given this pessimistic outlook on gear, there is one piece of equipment that has been critical for every single backpacking or camping trip I have done since 2003.

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When Camping Isn’t Camping

Camping

One good thing about camping is that each camper gets to define what camping is, because there is no commonly accepted definition. Backpacking is different. Most people will agree, to some extent, what backpacking is. Not so with camping.

xmas-2016_1
View from our Christmas campsite

This Christmas vacation, as we have done every year since 2002, we hitched up our camper and left home. It was a new destination for us and 800 miles one-way from home. Our campground was nestled among the costal Redwoods a few miles north of the itty bitty seaside city of Trinidad, CA.

But it really wasn’t a camping trip; we would be visiting my daughter and her family.

We just happened to be staying in a campground, in our camper, in a forest.

Or were we camping?

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